Islamic center clerk seized in Zambo City

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Armed men wearing camouflage uniforms and masks snatched a clerk of an Islamic center from his house in a coastal village here last Saturday night, police said.

The victim, Alrashid Maha Rojas, 56, a clerk at the Islamic Study Center at the state-run Western Mindanao State University, was dragged from his house in Barangay Campo Islam and made to board a boat that fled toward Basilan.

The kidnapping came barely hours after suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized Tausug sisters Nadjouna and Linda Bansil, daughters of an imam (Muslim preacher) in Patikul, Sulu. The Bansils were doing a documentary for a group called Tausug Citizen.