Zambo businesswoman freed

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines – Kidnappers believed to have links with the Abu Sayyaf freed unharmed a 28-year-old businesswoman in a coastal area here last Tuesday after over four months in captivity, authorities said.

Former Basilan vice governor Al-Rasheed Sakalahul said Sabrina Ikbala Voon was released by her captors in a private wharf in Baliwasan Seaside, just more than a kilometer away from the city proper. She was later fetched by her family.

Six armed men posing as police officers seized Voon, a cosmetics dealer, from her home in Barangay Mercedes here last Feb. 19 and brought her to Basilan.

Sakalahul did not say if money exchanged hands, adding that he just facilitated Voon’s safe release. The kidnappers earlier had demanded P5-million ransom.

Sakalahul said he just arrived from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with Vice President Jejomar Binay when Voon’s family approached him to help negotiate her release last Sunday because her captors had turned her over to the “Basilan group.”

Voon’s uncle, retired police general Sukarno Ikbala, former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police director, said, “We did not pay any ransom. Perhaps the kidnappers were trying to evade being tracked down as the operations kept on closing in.”