Ransom Paid?: Missing journalist released in Sulu

ZAMBOANGA CITY — Controversial television journalist Arlyn de la Cruz, missing for three months, was freed by former Muslim rebels in Jolo, Sulu early yesterday.

De la Cruz said no ransom was paid, but the Agence France Presse quoted intelligence officials, who did not want to be identified, as saying that P2 million had changed hands to win her liberty.

Sen. Loren Legarda, who said her staff had negotiated for De la Cruz’s freedom, insisted there had been "no conditions" attached to her release.

"Arlyn’s mother sought my help," the senator said.

Asked if ransom was paid, Col. Romeo Tolentino, Army commander in Jolo, said, "I don’t know. Most probably."

Tolentino said De la Cruz, 32, was released to Mashur Jumdan, a professor of the UP Diliman Institute of Islamic Studies, at about 5:30 a.m. in Casanyangan, a remote village at the Indanan-Patikul boundary.

She was taken to the airport in Zamboanga City, then was flown by a chartered King Air jet to Manila. Legarda accompanied her.

Smiling, she was wearing a Muslim headdress that she took off as she arrived at the airport.

‘Answered prayer’

"By the grace of God, I am finally home," she told reporters before leaving. "This is an answered prayer."

Tolentino said De la Cruz owed her release more to military pressure.

"She was freed because of the intense military pressure on the Abu Sayyaf group. The rebels are trapped, they are on the run and we will get them," he said.

Col. Jose Mabanta, Armed Forces spokesman, said the military and the police are jointly investigating De La Cruz’s abduction.

"Mystery still shrouds the incident which only Arlyn can fully explain," he said.

Military sources in Mindanao, Mabanta said, "are doubtful if it is really an abduction, claiming that Arlyn always comes back and that she knows her abductors although she does not want to reveal (their identities) now."

De la Cruz obtained the first interviews of American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham, who are being held hostage by the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group, late last year, then vanished in January while apparently seeking access to the captives again.

She said she had been dragged around between several towns in Jolo, and that she believed her kidnappers were not Abu Sayyaf rebels but a group of former members of the separatist Moro National Liberation Front who have been integrated into the military.

Ethical issues

Other media questioned whether De la Cruz had staged her own disappearance because of ethical issues raised in the past over her relationship with the Abu Sayyaf, the target of a United States-backed search by the Philippine military on Basilan island.

De la Cruz denied those accusations. "I don’t know how could anyone stage something like this," she said.

De la Cruz, who has two young children, was last seen Jan. 19 on Basilan, where fellow journalist and friend Fe Zamora said she went "for a big scoop." Zamora said she had planned to go, too, but backed out at the last minute because of the risks.

In cellphone calls that De la Cruz said her captors allowed her to make to Zamora and others, she said she was taken hostage – and her Abu Sayyaf guide slain – on Jan. 20.

She claimed her captors thought she was acting as a go-between for the release of the Burnhams and carrying $800,000 in ransom they hoped to steal, and were angry to find she had only about $40.

Her friends argue that De la Cruz is a hardworking reporter who has won the Abu Sayyaf’s trust, which they say has spawned slander from jealous competitors.

Critics call her a self-promoter, questioning whether she cut a deal with the al-Qaeda-linked rebels to share the proceeds from interviews with its captives that are sold to the highest media bidder.

She had also obtained the first interviews with Western tourists snatched by the Abu Sayyaf from the Malaysian resort of Sipadan in 2000. — Roel Pareño, Rey Arquiza, Jaime Laude