The rescue of 17-year-old Alvin Sy by agents of the NBI’s Special Action Unit and Special Task Force came barely 12 hours after four men waylaid and seized him in Quiapo, Manila.
This developed as Sen. Loren Legarda expressed alarm yesterday over rising kidnap-for-ransom cases, noting that 11 victims have been slain in the past six months.
Legarda told the Kilosbayan forum that eight kidnap victims were killed in 1998 and three last year. This year, she said the abductors of a British executive, Azhar Ali Khan, lopped off his ear despite the payment of a P10-million ransom.
"The unfortunate truth is that there are plausible indications of police conspiracy with the underworld, and there is a growing body of evidence on police corruption," she said.
The NBI said Sy’s parents sought its assistance immediately after the teenager was snatched at gunpoint at about 5:30 a.m. last Thursday. A team of NBI agents headed by Vicente de Guzman and Marianito Panganiban, was formed to help them.
The NBI said the kidnappers called up the Sys and demanded a P10-million ransom, but later reduced it to P5 million.
After tracing the telephone call to Pansol, Laguna, NBI agents went to the place and searched for the teenager’s Mitsubishi Galant which his captors commandeered. At about 3 p.m., they found the car parked inside the Bato-Bato Resort.
The NBI agents swooped down on one of the cottages where Alvin was being kept. The suspects shot it out with the agents for 15 minutes, which left one of them, Lao Anshno, 20, dead.
Anshno’s two accomplices, PO1 Abdul Cosain, a Marawi City policeman, and Amin Ador, were arrested, while the fourth suspect, Aminula Dabao, managed to escape. — With Jose Aravilla