Kidnapped Cotabato City businesswoman released

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – A 73-year-old businesswoman who was kidnapped last Oct. 8 was freed by her captors in a marshy area several kilometers south of the Army’s Camp Gonzalo Siongco in Maguindanao before dawn yesterday.

Col. Ernesto Aradanas, commander of the Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade, said the ailing victim, Conchita Tan, whose family owns a hardware store here, left for Manila via a Cebu Pacific flight past noon yesterday for medical check-up.

“We did not talk about the identities of her captors or about the possibility of them paying ransom, but personally I’m convinced that ransom was paid to the kidnappers,” Aradanas, chairman of the inter-agency Task Force Conchita, told The STAR.

The task force was created last weekend by Cotabato City Mayor Japal Guiani Jr. to oversee the police and military operations against Tan’s captors.

Tan was snatched near her residence in the Dapdap area here on the night of Oct. 8 by Maguindanaon-speaking men armed with assault rifles.

The kidnappers gunned down Tan’s two security escorts as they forced her into their getaway vehicle.

Aradanas said eight platoons of soldiers were involved in the hunt for Tan’s captors. He, however, declined to comment when asked if they would still continue to run after the kidnappers now that Tan had been freed.

Tan’s weeklong captivity was preceded by the kidnapping here last August of another Filipino-Chinese trader, Nelson Tay. – With Jaime Laude