‘Eye for an eye’ in Bossi’s release?

WHILE there’s much rejoicing over the release of Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi, a question hovers like a dark cloud over it: Did government agents abduct the relatives of his kidnappers to obtain the priest’s release? Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon has vowed to investigate the report, although he says his office has yet to formally receive such information.

Philippine National Police Western Mindanao director, Chief Superintendent Jaime G. Caringal and his men are now being hailed as heroes for managing Bossi’s release minus the bloodshed that often accompanied previous high-profile kidnappings down south.

“I will not admit that,” Caringal says when asked about reports of using a “kidnap-for-kidnap” tactic in securing the priest’s release. He says he and his team nurtured the negotiations from the beginning by establishing the right connections, and by treating each development with patience, formulating strategies along the way.

Caringal says days after Bossi was kidnapped, his group tried to establish links with the right “line,” a person who can serve as a conduit to the kidnappers. It turned out there were several “enterprising” individuals and groups offering information about Bossi, for a fee. Surprisingly, a source says they discovered there were several groups also working for Bossi’s release, some of them in government.

Caringal’s group settled with former Tuburan mayor Hajuran Jamiri, a former Moro National Liberation Front commander. Jamiri was unavailable in the initial stage of the talks, as he ran, but lost in the special elections in Lanao del Norte.

The first “proof of life” secured by Jamiri was a picture and a video of Bossi in captivity. The picture appeared in some newspapers two days after it was given to Caringal’s group. “That should not have happened,” says Caringal, as it potentially compromised details of the talks. He adds that the materials did not assure him and his team that Bossi was still alive. There was nothing in the picture and the video to indicate when they were taken, diluting their validity as proof of life. A source says the picture found its way to the papers when someone close to the negotiations sold it to Bossi’s colleagues for P50,000.

It remains unclear whether Jamiri had direct, personal meetings with the kidnappers during the talks, or if he was using a conduit. What is clear is that he was chosen for the job because he alone provided tangible proof that he had the right network that linked the PNP to Bossi’s kidnappers. Caringal refused to divulge whether Jamiri was paid for his services, admitting only to forking over money for the former mayor’s SIM card, cell-phone load, food and boarding expenses. His family was also given “protection” while the talks were ongoing.

The negotiators gave it another try, this time dictating the elements they wanted in the picture before it is shot. They gave Jamiri a July 11 copy of the Philippine Star, which they wanted to be shown with Bossi. Three days later, Jamiri produced the picture. That was when negotiations began, Caringal says. While the second picture made it to the hands of some journalists, this time, they refrained from printing it to avoid compromising the negotiations.

Around 2 p.m. of July 19, Caringal’s team received information that Bossi’s kidnappers, faced with mounting pressure from military and police operations, were about to abandon their captive. They have been trapped, unable to move for days because of increased police and military operations near the area where Bossi was being kept. A source says the number of kidnappers dwindled from 15 to five in the final days of the kidnapping.

Around 9 p.m. of the same day, Caringal’s team, already on the road, received news that Bossi had been turned over to a PNP-friendly emissary at the border of Zamboanga del Sur and Lanao del Norte. Bossi was reportedly escorted out of his captors’ mountain hideout, made to walk for two hours, and abandoned upon reaching a highway. The emissary sent by the PNP, who was also known to the kidnappers, met him there. Shortly before midnight, Caringal and his team had Bossi in their hands.

Caringal refuses to reveal details of the negotiations for Bossi’s release from the time his team received the second proof of life to the night the priest was freed, beyond saying his team used “persuasion, psy-war and pressure.” He says his team made use of tactics that showed the kidnappers “that they were not impregnable.”

A police source denies kidnapping was employed to obtain Bossi’s release. He could only go as far as admitting to “intimidation” of people who were related to Akhidin Abdusalam alias Commander Khidi. Khidi, the alleged brains of the kidnapping, is said to be a rogue commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And as children are often raised in a culture of extended families in Mindanao, Khidi was vulnerable.

“We dealt with them in a manner that they will understand, and we communicated in a language that both (sides) understood,” Caringal says. He adds that no ransom was paid, and that no abduction of anyone related to the kidnappers took place.

Caringal is a member of the Philippine Military Academy class of 1976. He was formerly the PNP‘s intelligence chief before being named regional commander of the PNP in Southern Luzon and later in Western Mindanao. A son-in-law of the controversial retired general Fortunato Abat, he retires next year.