Posted on 11/05/2001 1:59:49 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines - A young Filipina nurse held for months by Muslim guerrillas in the southern Philippines was set free after she converted to Islam, the military said on Monday.
Reina Malonzo, wearing a Muslim dress and veil, refused to talk about her release when the military presented her to reporters on Monday but confirmed she had abandoned her Roman Catholic faith.
"I joined Islam because I realised that it is a beautiful religion," she said.
Southern military commander Lieutenant-General Roy Cimatu declined to give details on how the military found Malonzo.
"It was more of a recovery," Cimatu said. "I cannot divulge to you how it happened and where...We cannot just reveal everything. It is very vital in our follow-up operation."
A senior intelligence officer said the military learned of her release when government agents saw her walking in a shopping mall in Zamboanga last Thursday.
They then asked her to go to a military base, where she has been ever since, the officer said.
Malonzo, 23, had been with a group of American and Filipino hostages held for months by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on the mountainous southern island of Basilan, 960 km (600 miles) south of Manila.
The United States has listed the Muslim Abu Sayyaf as one of the groups supporting Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, whom U.S. officials accuse of masterminding the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The Abu Sayyaf is still holding American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham and about eight other Filipinos.
Malonzo was taken hostage in June when the guerrillas briefly occupied a hospital in the Basilan town of Lamitan.
She refused to answer when asked to comment on reports from hostages previously freed by the Abu Sayyaf that she had married guerrilla leader Khadafy Janjalani during her captivity.
The Abu Sayyaf seized the Burnhams, Californian tourist Guillermo Sobero and 17 other Filipinos from a beach resort on Palawan island on May 27 and brought them to their jungle hideouts on Basilan, where they took more Filipino hostages, including Malonzo.
They later freed several of their captives in exchange for ransom but beheaded others, including Sobero.
The Abu Sayyaf professes to fight for an Islamic state in the south of this mainly Roman Catholic country but pursues kidnap for ransom as its main activity.
Another group of Muslim gunmen is holding Italian priest Giuseppe Pierantoni, who was snatched from his rectory in the southern province of Zamboanga del Sur on October 17.
1. Stockholm Syndrome
2. She converted to get the hell outta there
3. She's a complete idiot: Since when is kidnapping and beheading people 'beautiful'?!
Make love not war immediately comes to mind when I think of the Taliban and their supporting cells. Not.
She's probably scared to death of these terrorists and their thugs around the world. I imagine they told her she'd be watched.
My, my, my. The instinct for self preservation generates some remarkable epiphanies, doesn't it?
Yeah, the world and everything in it looks pretty damn nice when you are staring at the business end of a rifle.
Are religious conversions, like legal confessions, made under duress, considered valid? That is a question I would like to see posed to some mullah or so-called expert on Islam.
And people's heads are being wacked off their bodies.
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines (Reuters) - A Californian tourist kidnapped by Muslim guerrillas in the Philippines wept and pleaded with his captors before they beheaded him in June, a detained teenager who was part of the group said on Wednesday.
``He cried and said 'no, no' as he was made to kneel,'' 16-year-old Basit Balahim told reporters from a police cell in the southern city of Zamboanga, referring to the killing of Guillermo Sobero.
Sobero, a 40-year-old from Corona, California, was kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas from an island resort in the western Philippines on May 27 along with 17 Filipinos and two other Americans.
The Abu Sayyaf, which has been linked to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, said it beheaded Sobero some two weeks later on the southern island of Basilan as a warning.
The group still holds U.S. missionaries Gracia and Martin Burnham and nine Filipinos hostage on Basilan, a mountainous jungle-clad isle off Zamboanga.
Balahim and his father, Abdul Kap, a senior leader of the Abu Sayyaf, were arrested on Basilan on Sunday and brought to Zamboanga, the military said.
The clean-shaven teenager, who sported extremely long hair, said Sobero was hacked to death with a machete by an aide to guerrilla leader Khadafy Janjalani while others watched.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Embassy said it had positively identified skeletal remains found on Basilan as those of Sobero.
Balahim said he had been a member of the Abu Sayyaf since he was 14 and had killed several soldiers. He was being held in a cell with a wooden grill across the windows, guarded by several policemen armed with assault rifles.
``I no longer want to be an Abu Sayyaf member,'' Balahim said. ``You are always on the run. It's difficult being pursued by a lot of soldiers.''
The military has said its special forces troops have scored several successes against the Abu Sayyaf in the past few weeks and would ``demolish'' the group by the end of November.
A U.S. military counter-terrorism team has arrived in Zamboanga to give advice and suggest equipment which can be used in the fight against the Abu Sayyaf, local army officials have said.
The Abu Sayyaf says it is fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in the south of the Roman Catholic Philippines but appears to pursue kidnap for ransom as its main activity.
The government has called it a group of bandits and has refused to negotiate.
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