Kidnap charges filed vs two sons of M’guindanao mayor

KIDAPAWAN CITY — The North Cotabato provincial government filed kidnapping charges the other day against two sons of a Maguindanao mayor for allegedly masterminding last month’s abduction of a Chinese manager of the contractor of a foreign-funded irrigation project in the province.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, chairman of the crisis committee working out the release of engineer Zhang Zhong Quiang, identified those charged as brothers Kaotin and Andi Montawal, sons of Datu Janggo Montawal, mayor of Pagalungan, Maguinda-nao.

Montawal’s wife, Bai Annie, is also the mayor of Pagagawan, a town adjacent to Pagalungan.

"Witnesses have positively pointed to the two suspects as involved in the abduction of Zhang, who is being held captive (in the boundary) of Maguindanao and North Cotabato," Piñol said.

The governor said one of the Montawals’ vehicles, a red Nissan Pathfinder with license plate LCP 353, was allegedly used in the abduction.

Zhang, operations manager of the China Import-Export Technologies Inc., was snatched by five gunmen while en route to the irrigation project site in Carmen, North Cotabato from Davao City on board a chartered passenger van.

The van’s owner, Percival Ceriales, voluntarily yielded to Piñol’s office last week and confessed to his involvement in Zhang’s kidnapping.

Witnesses alleged that the Montawal brothers, one of them working as security chief in the Malitubog-Maridagao irrigation project in Carmen, provided the armed men who snatched Zhang with money and vehicles they needed in pulling off the abduction.

The irrigation facility, if completed, can irrigate 11,000 hectares of ricefields in North Cotabato and Maguindanao. Zhang’s firm is constructing major components of the project.

Last week, lawmen arrested three security guards at the project site, who were implicated in the abduction.

Piñol, meanwhile, downplayed as a "diversionary ploy" the claims of Faisal Marohomsar, a notorious Maranaw kidnapper, and his cohort, a certain Abu Hamsa, that Zhang is in their hands now and that they can only release him to an emissary of the Libyan government, but in exchange for a $4-million ransom.

"That is aimed only at diverting the attention of the police and military which are now gaining headway in identifying the people behind the kidnapping and in prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law," Piñol said.