Bloodied Irish priest sighted

By Mario J. Mallari

10/16/2009

Kidnapped Irish priest, Fr. Michael Sinnott, was reportedly seen bloodied by witnesses, military officials claimed.

Sinnot was sighted in Lanao province yesterday, in a bloodied condition.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is now checking the veracity of the reports from witnesses.

“We received information that he was seen bloodied but we still have to verify this report. We are not certain as to his exact medical condition. It is based on witnesses’ account, maybe in the process of being transferred from one place to another,” AFP spokesman Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner said.

He added authorities have already identified four of the six armed men who snatched Sinnot last Sunday at his residence at the Columban House in Gatas District, Pagadian City.

A report said the kidnappers of the priest had already gotten in touch with the Columban society.

Brawner said the suspects are members of a kidnap-for-ransom group led by local pirate Guingona Samal alias Kumander Ingo who operates mainly in Zamboanga del Sur.

Samal was initially tagged as the owner of the watercraft used in transporting the 79-year-old Columban missionary from Pagadian City to Lanao.

Police and military officials a day earlier, however, claimed that Sinnot, while he was snatched by the local pirate, confirmed that Samal turned over his hostage Sinnott to a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) commander.

Brawner said the AFP, particularly the Western Mindanao Command (Wesmincom), has already deployed additional troops and assets in the area to block all possible escape and supply routes of the kidnap group.

The last sighting of Sinnot and his abductors was in the triboundaries of the towns of Sultan Naga Dimaporo and Nunungan in Lanao del Norte and Ticong, Lanao del Sur.

“We have infused more troops in the area to make sure the kidnappers won’t escape from the general area,” said Brawner, stressing the possibility that the kidnap group is making its way to Basilan province, a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group.

Brawner said the Wesmincom has already deployed additional two battalions to conduct containment operations in the area on top of the four Navy ships earlier tapped to cordon off the reported location of Sinnott and his abductors.

At the same time, Brawner said the Zamboanga del Sur provincial crisis management committee headed by Gov. Aurora Enerio-Cerilles is now establishing contacts with the kidnap group that snatched Sinnott last Sunday.

“The crisis management committee is in the process of communicating with the kidnappers and the AFP will follow whatever the committee tells us to do,” said Brawner.

The MILF, the country’s biggest Muslim rebel group again denied that one of its commanders was holding the kidnapped Irish priest, while insisting it wanted to help rescue him.

The military and police also said that Sinnott was being held in a remote area that is known to be an MILF stronghold.

“We do not deny the fact that there is a presence of the MILF in the area and an MILF community there but it is not true that the MILF is holding the priest,” the group’s spokesman, Eid Kabalu, said in response on Thursday.

Kabalu also said the MILF was sending an emissary to Sultan Naga Dimaporo town, where the military said Sinnott was being held, to check if the priest was really there and try to secure his release.

“We are ready to intervene and operate for the possible recovery of the priest. We have already mobilized our men on the ground to do whatever action is necessary,” he said.

Six armed gunmen kidnapped Sinnott on Sunday night from his home at the Missionary Society of Saint Columban compound in Pagadian City on southern Mindanao island.

There are fears Sinnott may be used to extract a ransom, either by the pirate or whomever he passes the priest on to.

Aside from the MILF, the Muslim militant Abu Sayyaff group and armed gangs such as the one run by the pirate, Guingona Samal, operate in the area.

The government and the MILF have had a ceasefire in place since 2005 and the two sides are due to resume peace talks soon.

The MILF, which has been fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in the south of this Catholic country since 1978, has said it had no interest in abducting Sinnott because that would jeopardize peace talks.

There is concern over Sinnott’s health as he had quadruple heart bypass surgery in 2005 and needs constant medication.

Sinnott has spent about 40 years in the Philippines, first arriving in Mindanao in 1957 as a missionary. After a stint elsewhere, he came back to the Philippines in 1976 and never left.

While missionaries have been kidnapped by Muslim militants, murdered and in one case even eaten by a cannibal, foreign Catholic missionaries say they will not abandon the volatile southern Philippines.

They acknowledge the dangers of performing God’s work in Mindanao, the country’s southern third where Islamist militants have for centuries struggled against Christian rule.

But even in the wake of elderly Irish priest Michael Sinnott’s abduction on Sunday, it is a risk they say they are willing to take in spreading the gospel and helping disadvantaged people in impoverished areas.

“We will not leave this place, absolutely,” said Father Indra Pamungkas, a 46-year-old Indonesian priest who has been in Mindanao for the past 17 years.

“I am not afraid, we are comfortable working here because God will protect us. We were shocked by the kidnapping. But overall, it will not affect our work,” Pamungkas said.

The roughly 40 foreign and Filipino Columban missionaries in Mindanao similarly have no intention of leaving after Sinnott’s abduction.

“We will take necessary security precautions, but our work will continue,” the Philippine head of the Columban Missionaries, Father Patrick O’Donoghue, told Agence France Presse.

Sinnott was the third Columban priest targeted in the south in recent years.

In 1997, militants kidnapped Desmond Hartford in the Islamic heartland of Marawi, releasing him after less than two weeks. In 2001, Rufus Halley was killed when he tried to fend off gunmen who tried to abduct him.

The Sacred Heart missionaries have also been targeted. One of them, Italian Giuseppe Pierantoni, was held for six months in 2001 during which he said he lived off snake and lizard meat before escaping.

Perhaps the most infamous case in Mindanao was that of Italian priest Tullio Favali, from the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.

He was shot in the head by a gunman with links to a local religious cult in 1985, after which the murderer danced around his victim’s body and ate parts of the priest’s brain, according to police.

The al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group also seized an American missionary couple, Martin and Gracia Burnham, along with a group of Filipinos in 2001.

After more than a year in captivity, Martin Burnham was killed in a military rescue.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom has warned its citizens against traveling to southwest Mindanao following the abduction of an Irish priest by alleged members of a Muslim rebel group over the weekend.

In an updated travel advisory, the UK expressed concern on the ongoing threat of kidnapping of foreign nationals in Mindanao, citing the case of the Columban priest.

To its British citizens, the UK said: You should be aware that the long-standing policy of the British government is not to make substantive concessions to hostage takers. The British government considers that paying ransoms and releasing prisoners increases the risk of further hostage taking.”

The UK alerted its citizens of the “high threat” of terrorism throughout the Philippines, saying terrorist groups continue to plan attacks and have the capacity and the intent to carry out these attacks at “any time and anywhere in the country.”

Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travelers, it said.

Areas being banned for travel by the UK are: the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, including the islands of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, plus the eastern provinces of Sarangani, North and South Cotabato , Sultan Kudarat, Lanao del Norte, Zamboanga del Sur and Zamboanga Sibugay.

“We advise against all but essential travel to the remainder of Mindanao. This is because of ongoing terrorist activity there have been a number of terrorist attacks against civilian targets,” it said.

British nationals were also warned of the risk of terrorist attacks to all forms of public transport, such as road, rail, sea and air.

Around 70,000 British tourists visit the Philippines every year.

With Michaela P. del Callar

Back to top

For comments about this website:Webmaster@tribune.net.ph
The Daily Tribune © 2006