Pentagon men seize trader’s son

COTABATO CITY — Suspected followers of Pentagon kidnap gang leader Tahir Alonto snatched Tuesday night in Tacurong City a three-year-old son of an agricultural trader whom they first forced to pay "protection money" and abducted his child after he refused and engaged them in a gunbattle.

Maj. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said members of the 301st Infantry Brigade, led by Col. Agustin Dema-ala, are now pursuing the abductors of Jester Horlador, who were last seen en route to Maguindanao.

Citing initial feedback, Ando said the abductors, armed with handguns and disguised as farmers, first approached the boy’s father, Joseph, who buys and sells farm products in Barangay Dina, a secluded community in Tacurong City, and asked for a big sum of "protection money."

The older Horlador refused and, as an altercation between him and the gunmen ensued, pulled out a pistol and engaged them in a brief shootout.

As the armed men withdrew, Ando said they took the trader’s son and fled toward Buluan, a hostile town in the second district of Maguindanao.

Ando said their intelligence units in Tacurong City and surrounding towns in Sultan Kudarat are convinced that the kidnappers were rouge MILF rebels identified with the Pentagon, a notorious kidnapping gang operating in Central Mindanao.