This now is the question being raised by authorities after Rodwell’s Filipino wife Miraflor Gutang, 29, claimed she sold their house and other properties, and sought help from relatives to raise $94,000 to pay the Abu Sayyaf.
Rodwell, a former soldier in the Australian army, was kidnapped by gunmen who posed as policemen on December 2011 from his seaside house in Ipil town in Zamboanga del Sur province, and freed on March 2 after his Filipino wife paid the ransom to the Abu Sayyaf, which originally demanded $2 million.
Gutang’s fantastic claim of herself raising the ransom was far from her previous statement following Rodwell’s kidnapping in which she said in a radio interview that “whoever had kidnapped my husband, he is not rich. Return him to us and please don’t hurt him. My husband is ill.”
General Ricardo Rainier Cruz III, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said the ransom received by the Abu Sayyaf would further threaten peace and security in the Muslim province, saying the terrorist group would likely to use the money to purchase illegal weapons and fund kidnappings and terrorism in Basilan and probably other parts of Mindanao.
“We are worried about this situation now because the Abu Sayyaf may use the ransom to fund terror activities and kidnappings and endangering civilian lives,” he said in an interview.
Gutang – who previously complained to the police that she was beaten up by Rodwell – abandoned her husband days before he was kidnapped. Rodwell, a prolific world traveller, married Gutang in June 2011 in Ipil town after the two met through the Internet and bought a house in October of the same year in Pangi village in Ipil.
Inspector Edwin Verzon, then the police chief of Zamboanga Sibugay’s Ipil town, confirmed this and said the woman had filed two abuse complaints against Rodwell since the marriage. The woman’s family also said that Rodwell maltreated his wife.
“She filed two complaints with us and she was also planning to bring it to the attention of the Australian embassy in Manila, but we don’t know if she pursued it,” Verzon said.
Days after Rodwell was kidnapped, Gutang had told the media that they cannot afford to pay any ransom because they are poor. Her 66-year old father, Loreto, works in the farm and her mother, Salvadora, 61, stays only at home in their ancestral house in Naga town.
The Rodwell’s house in Ipil town has not been sold contrary to Gutang’s claim, but is now being rented by a Filipino family for P2,000 a month, although her brother is said to be transferring to the house.
“I know the story of this house and about Rodwell and we are renting this house from Miraflor for two thousand pesos and we’ve just moved in a couple of weeks ago,” tenant Jeffrey Mabago, whose wife works in Singapore, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He said they may transfer to another house after Gutang told them that her brother is moving in. “That’s what she told us. Her brother is moving in and that she will refund us our deposits,” he said, adding the Rodwells still owned the house. “As far as I know this house still belongs to them and was never sold.”
Rodwell’s room is still locked and the door reinforced with iron grills, just as how it was when the gunmen barged into the house and dragged the foreigner to the bushes outside that leads to sea 15 months ago.
The barbed wires that once surrounded the two-room house were gone, but a torn yellow strip of tape used by the police to secure the compound is still hanging by the wooden gate, a harrowing reminder of the past.
Rodwell’s sister Denise and his brother Wayne, who flew to Manila from Australia to be reunited with the freed adventurer, did not meet with Gutang.
President Benigno Aquino has ordered an investigation into the payment of ransom to the terrorist group, saying, he has not seen any reports on the Rodwell case. “I haven’t seen a report from the concerned (authorities, the) PNP anti-kidnapping group and others,” he said.
Aquino said the government has a strict no-ransom policy. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” he said.
There were suspicion the ransom money either came from Rodwell’s family in Australia or from the Australian government and only used Gutang as a cover to justify the payment to the terrorist group, blamed for many kidnappings and bombings in the southern Philippines.
Efforts to contact Gutang were futile and she did not answer phone calls by journalists.
Rodwell has signed his affidavit of abduction with the Department of Justice in Manila, but State Prosecutor Aristotle Reyes said the Sydney man has no plans of filing charges against the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group.
“The purpose of the affidavit is for the processing of the investigation of the case…so far, Rodwell has not decided whether to press charges (against his abductors), but (his sworn) statement can be used by the PNP (Philippine National Police) to pursue a complaint,” Reyes said.
Rodwell evaded the Philippine press and would not talk to journalists since his release. (Mindanao Examiner)
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