2 kidnappers of Chinoy trader in Cotabato City identified

COTABATO CITY — Army and police intelligence operatives have identified two of the gunmen who abducted here last Friday Filipino-Chinese trader Benny Cota.

Lt. Col. George Lomboy, commander of the Army’s anti-crime Task Group Cotabato, said they have been receiving feedback from informants, some of them Muslim religious leaders, that two of Cota’s abductors, identified as Wahab Upao and Omar Wayan, are both residents of this city.

Lomboy said the intelligence agents are now locating the whereabouts of the kidnappers and Cota, a distributor of office supplies and computer parts.

Cota’s brother-in-law, Percival Pabiona, said they have not received any ransom demand from the kidnappers.

"What we are worried about is the health of Benny. He has daily medication for various ailments. I hope the kidnappers will provide him the medicines he need to take everyday," Pabiona told reporters.

Cota was on his way to their store when the kidnappers took him at gunpoint just as he was coming out of their yard and spirited him away in his own red Tamaraw FX with license plates LCP-288.

Cota’s vehicle was found abandoned in Barangay Bagu II here.

Cota was said to have sustained a cut in the head when one of his captors pistol-whipped him as they dragged him into his Tamaraw FX.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, chairman of the city’s peace and order council here, has urged the kidnappers to release Cota without any ransom.

"Whoever you are, whatever your religion is, please set the businessman free. No religion in this world teaches kidnapping or allows commission of crimes," Sema told Catholic radio station dxMS, the leading broadcast outfit here.

Sources in the Army’s intelligence community said the abductors of Cota could be members of the Pentagon Gang, implicated in more than 50 kidnappings since 2001.