ZAMBOANGA SIBUGAY (Mindanao Examiner / June 16, 2013) – Freed Abu Sayyaf hostage, Australian adventurer Warren Rodwell, has finally admitted that his siblings raised the ransom paid for his safe release, denying claims by his Filipino wife that she sold off their properties in the Philippines to pay off the rebel group.
His Filipina wife, Miraflor Gutang, 29, has insisted that she paid the ransom that led to Rodwell’s release in March this year.
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.”
Rodwell, who returned to Australia following his release, told news.com.au that the ransom paid to the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group was solely raised by Denise Capello and Wayne Rodwell.
Gutang, daughter of a farming couple, had claimed selling their house and other properties in Zamboanga Sibugay province in Mindanao and sought help from relatives to raise $94,000 to pay the Abu Sayyaf.
Her brother helped her deliver the money in Zamboanga City following a series of negotiations headed by Basilan provincial deputy governor Al Rasheed Sakalahul.
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 and freed on March 2.
The Abu Sayyaf originally demanded $2 million.
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.
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.
Rodwell’s house in Ipil town has not been sold contrary to Gutang’s claim, but was rented by a Filipino family for P2,000 a month, although her brother is said to be transferring to the house.
Tenant Jeffrey Mabago, whose wife works in Singapore, said Gutang
told him that her brother is moving in the house. “That’s what she told us. Her brother is moving in and that she will refund us our deposits,” he said, adding Rodwell 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.
President Benigno Aquino has previously ordered an investigation into the payment of ransom to the rebel 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.
And nothing was heard from the authorities about the ransom payment until the news broke out in Australia over the weekend.
Rodwell said he also filed a divorce and had told Gutang that she can keep his house in Ipil. Gutang, who has a child in a previous relationship, has not seen Rodwell since his release.
Gutang has evaded journalists in Zamboanga and now lives with her parents in the province. She could be facing perjury charges. (Mindanao Examiner)
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