Kidnap victim escapes from 'Pentagon'

Police recovered a kidnapped Filipino trader yesterday, who escaped from his captors in the southern Philippines, officials said.

Bartolome Baluyot, Central Mindanao Police Commander, said pursuing police commandos recovered Claudioso Villasur, 62, on a remote farming village in North Cotabato province, two days after the suspected members of a kidnap-for-ransom gang called the 'Pentagon' abducted him, his sick wife and two others in Maguindanao's Datu Paglas town.

Baluyot said guerrillas freed two other unidentified kidnap victims in Cotabato City near Maguindanao late on Thursday, but held on to Villasur's wife, Carmen, 60, in North Cotabato.

He said the victims were onboard a van when masked gunmen, believed to be members of the Pentagon Gang, flagged them down.

"Rescue operation is going on. We have deployed police forces in North Cotabato and Maguindanao to prevent the kidnappers from escaping. We are searching for the remaining hostage," Baluyot said.

The United States has included the Pentagon gang in its list of foreign terrorist organisations alongside with the Abu Sayyaf group, the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing the New People's Army (NPA).

Baluyot said guerrillas were demanding P30-million ($600,000) ransom in exchange for the release of Carmen.

"Mrs Villasur is suffering from renal failure. Her life is surely in great danger, but we are doing everything to rescue her safely from the kidnappers," he said.

Police said Villasur was a former provincial government official in North Cotabato. Baluyot said Emmanuel Pinol, North Cotabato Governor and the Head of the Local Crisis Management Committee, is supervising the rescue operation and he has mobilised pro-government militias, to help authorities track down the kidnappers.

"Even the villagers are helping us now and everybody's concerned about everybody and we really appreciate their cooperation," he said.

Police said most of the kidnappers were renegade members of the separatist rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The gang has been linked by police and military to the series of kidnappings of mostly wealthy traders and foreigners in the southern Philippines.

The group has also been tagged as behind the kidnappings last year of three Chinese men in North Cotabato, an Italian missionary in Zamboanga del Sur and a Korean treasure hunter, earlier this year near Maguindanao province, a known lair of the MILF.