ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 20, 2014) – Abu Sayyaf rebels have freed a kidnapped Filipino engineer after two months in captivity in the southern Filipino province of Sulu, police said Sunday.
Police said Bonifacio Salinas, 54, was released in the village of Bangkal in Patikul town. His freedom came barely a month after the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf released his wife, Claire, 52.
The couple was seized outside their house in Kasalamatan village in Patikul town on February 16. Both husband and wife work at the Jolo Mainland Water District.
“Engineer Bonifacio Salinas was released by his abductors in the vicinity of Bangkal village in Patikul and he is presently at the hospital for medical check up,” Senior Superintendent Abraham Orbita, the provincial police chief, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
It was unknown whether the family paid ransom for the safe release of Salinas.
The Abu Sayyaf is still holding several hostages, among them two European wildlife photographers Ewold Horn, 52, from Holland; and Lorenzo Vinciguerre, 47, from Switzerland who were kidnapped in Tawi-Tawi province on February 2012.
The two foreigners, along with their Filipino guide Ivan Sarenas, 35, were seized at gunpoint by five men in the coastal village of Parangan in Panglima Sugala town while taking photographs of wild birds, and handed them over to the Abu Sayyaf. Sarenas managed to escape, but the fate of the two foreigners is unknown. (Mindanao Examiner)
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