ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 13, 2011) – Kidnappers have freed a Filipino teenager, but held on his American cousin in the southern Philippine province of Basilan, officials said on Sunday.
Officials said Romnick Jakaria, 19, was released on a remote village in Maluso town where local officials handed him to the military. The fate of Kevin Lunsmann, 14, remains unknown, but kidnappers had released her mother Gerfa Yeats Lunsmann, 42, last month to raise ransoms for her son and nephew.
The trio was kidnapped by suspected Moro rebels on July 12 at a beach house in Zamboanga City while vacationing and brought to nearby Basilan, one of five provinces under the Muslim autonomous region in Mindanao.
“Jakaria is now with the authorities and are being interviewed so we can get more information about the kidnappers and their hostage, Kevin,” Lt. Col. Randolph Cabangbang, a spokesman for the Western Mindanao Command, told the Mindanao Examiner.
He said Gerfa Lunsmann was also freed in the town of Maluso on October 2 and brought by local officials to a military base in Zamboanga City and handed to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The woman, he said, was brought by an unidentified man wearing a ski mask onboard a motorized pump boat to a wharf in Maluso and let her walk towards the village to say she was released.
Filipino officials said the kidnappers were negotiating ransoms directly with the woman’s husband in Virginia. Local media have reported that the kidnappers demanded $10 million ransoms for Gerfa and her son, but this could not be immediately confirmed.
Security sources said Gerfa Lunsmann was released in exchange for millions of pesos in ransom and to raise money for her son’s freedom.
Gerfa was born in Basilan province and moved to the United States when she was nine years old after an American family adopted her. (Mindanao Examiner)
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