Philippines hostage crisis enters third month

Saturday, March 14, 2009 11:52:09 AM Oman Time

ZAMBOANGA: Three Red Cross workers abducted by Muslim militants enter their third month in captivity in the southern Philippines on Sunday with no sign of progress in negotiations.

Swiss national Andreas Notter, 38, Italian Eugenio Vagni, 62, and Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba, 37, were snatched by an Al Qaeda-linked group on the restive island of Jolo on January 15 while on a humanitarian mission.

The military says it knows where they are being held and has cordoned off the area of rugged jungle terrain on Jolo. But it has ruled out complying with the kidnappers’ demand that it withdraw troops from the island, and is reluctant to use force for fear of harming the hostages.

“We have two objectives. While we want to get the kidnappers to answer for their criminal acts, it is also important to safely rescue the hostages,” armed forces chief of staff General Alexander Yano said Friday.

After almost three weeks of silence, the hostages called the local Red Cross office on March 11 to say they were alive and had not been separated, as had been feared.

Initially, the hostages were allowed to call people on their mobile telephones and a government envoy delivered medicines to them, but such contacts ceased last month.

“They are stressed but taking into consideration the situation they are in, they sounded composed and calm,” said International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) regional spokesman Roland Bigler.

“We hope that this crisis will be solved very soon and our colleagues will be released as soon as possible unconditionally.” The kidnappers belong to the Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamic militants known to have received financing from the Al-Qaeda terror network.

The group has been kidnapping Westerners and Christians since the 1990s, only letting them go in return for ransom. It has said it is fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines, but officials say its members have become mere bandits.

The government has imposed a news blackout on the search for the hostages, making it virtually impossible to get accurate information.