Pentagon leader implicated in Sinos’ abduction nabbed

COTABATO CITY — A key leader of the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang linked to the 2001 abduction of five Chinese nationals involved in a foreign-funded irrigation project in North Cotabato, was arrested in a hotel here at dawn yesterday.

Lt. Col. Franklin Del Prado, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the suspect, Andih Montawal, did not resist arrest after sensing that men of the 6th ID’s intelligence unit and the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion, led by Lt. Col. George Lomboy, had surrounded the Violtan Pension House.

Del Prado said residents of Montawal’s hometown of Pagalungan, Maguindanao tipped off the military of the whereabouts of the Pentagon leader who checked in at the hotel last Monday.

"Immediately after confirming that it was, indeed, him who was at the hotel, agents and uniformed operatives raided the hotel and found him in one of the rooms there," Del Prado said.

Montawal, who belongs to an influential political clan in Maguindanao, will be brought to a Quezon City court which issued the warrant for his arrest in connection with the April 2001 abduction of engineer Zhang Zung Quiang, then the project manager of the Malitubog-Maridagao irrigation project in Carmen, North Cotabato.

Montawal and his men also held captive for more than a month four compatriots of Zhang, among them his younger brother, Zhang Zung Yi, and their Chinese-Filipino interpreter, who tried to negotiate Zhang Zung Quiang’s release.

The kidnapped engineer and one of the Chinese captives, Xue Xing, were executed by their captors during an encounter with pursuing soldiers at the boundary of Datu Paglas, Maguindanao and Columbio, Sultan Kudarat.

Another captive, Wang Sheng Li, managed to escape while the kidnappers traded shots with the advancing soldiers.

The remaining captives were freed near the Buliok complex in Pikit, North Cotabato after negotiations initiated by Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema and Libyan Ambassador Salem Adam.

The abduction of the Chinese nationals was the first-ever by the Pentagon gang, composed of rouge Moro rebels also known for their links with the Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah.

The Pentagon syndicate has been linked to the kidnappings of more than 50 people in Central Mindanao, some of them Chinese-Filipino traders, since 2001.