Italian Rolando del Torchio AP FILE PHOTO
ZAMBOANGA CITY—The police and the military mounted another massive search on land and at sea on Thursday for a former Italian Catholic missionary a day after he was abducted by gunmen in Dipolog City, Zamboanga del Norte province, where he has lived for years despite a history of attacks against fellow Italian priests, officials said.
The kidnapping of Rolando del Torchio, 56, came two weeks after three Westerners and a Filipino woman were abducted by gunmen from the resort island of Samal in Davao del Norte on Sept. 21.
Senior Supt. Chiquito Malayo, chief of the police intelligence division in Western Mindanao, said Del Torchio, who owned a pizzeria in Dipolog City, was dragged from his restaurant by armed men into a white van that sped away under cover of darkness around 7 p.m. on Wednesday.
Malayo said the van was abandoned on Dipolog Boulevard. The gunmen reportedly fled in two motorboats carrying Del Torchio.
Supt. Ranie Hachuela, city police chief, said at least six men, some armed with rifles, seized Del Torchio.
Hachuela said security cameras caught images of some of the gunmen and that may help authorities identify them.
Massive search
Philippine Air Force helicopters, Philippine Navy patrol boats and Philippine Army and Philippine National Police forces were deployed to search coastal areas and suspected hideouts, including in Sulu province, where al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf bandits have held hostages for ransom in jungle camps.
Lt. Col. Audie Mongao, spokesperson for the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, said checkpoints had been set up along all national highways in the region.
He said motorboats, speedboats and UH-1H helicopters had been deployed to look for the kidnappers in coastal areas of Zamboanga del Norte.
Mongao said the sea search covered the waters off Zamboanga del Norte as well as the Sulu Sea.
“We will also check coastal areas and ports for possible docking areas, while intelligence units are monitoring the suspects’ possible safe houses in the province,” Mongao said.
Navy ships had been alerted to intercept the kidnappers after intelligence indicated their boats had navigated along the Zamboanga Peninsula coastline toward the southwestern island of Jolo, some 400 kilometers away.
Jolo is the main base of the Abu Sayyaf, which has been blamed for the abductions and beheadings of Christian missionaries and foreign tourists.
“All kidnappings on the peninsula end up in Jolo. That’s the pattern,” said Capt. Roy Vincent Trinidad, a spokesperson for the military in the region.
Local crime ring
Supt. Cleve Taboso, spokesperson for the Western Mindanao Police Office, said details of Del Torchio’s kidnapping remain sketchy.
But Chief Supt. Miguel Antonio, regional police chief, said police suspected a local group was behind the abduction of Del Torchio.
“They are not Abu Sayyaf,” Antonio said.
He said he believed the kidnappers belong to an organized crime ring operating in Zamboanga del Norte.
Antonio said two possible suspects had been identified, but he would not disclose their names “as we are working on the rescue of the victim.”
It was not clear whether the crime ring was the same group that kidnapped Naga, Zamboanga Sibugay, Mayor Gemma Adana, Dapitan City village chair Rodolfo Boligao and two coast guards in May.
Boligao was beheaded after he was handed over to the Abu Sayyaf while the two coast guards escaped during a military operation three months later.
Adana remains in captivity.
Former missionary
Del Torchio was an agriculturist who became a missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (Pime), a Catholic group founded in Italy that has about 500 members in 17 countries.
He helped farmers hone their skills and set up cooperatives in poor communities, according to a colleague, Fr. Gianni Re.
“He’s a very approachable person,” Re said by phone, adding that Del Torchio left the Catholic mission several years ago but stayed in Dipolog even though three Catholic missionaries from the institute had been kidnapped and two others killed in the past three decades.
Re, who heads the institute in the Philippines, said 10 other Italian missionaries were still working in Mindanao.
Fr. Sebastiano D’Ambra, former regional superior of Pime and currently head of the peace group Silsilah, said Del Torchio’s former colleagues in the institute were shocked at the kidnapping.
“We are praying for his safety,” D’Ambra said.
Del Torchio had previously been targeted by kidnappers when he spent five years in Sibuco town, south of Dipolog.
He was assigned to the charity group Caritas in Italy before he left the priesthood.
After leaving the priesthood, Del Torchio returned to Dipolog and opened a pizzeria.
His kidnapping came even as authorities were still looking for Canadians John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad and Filipino Maritess Flor, who were abducted by an unknown group from a resort on Samal Island on Sept. 21.
Reports that the four had been taken to Jolo remain unconfirmed. With reports from Julie M. Aurelio in Manila, AP, AFP and Reuters