Kidnapped Teacher Freed by Muslim Extremists in Philippines

The teacher who was kidnapped by Muslim militants from a Catholic school in Tabawan was freed after his family paid a ransom. During the kidnapping, the terrorists killed Father Reynaldo Roda.

MANILA (AsiaNews) - The teacher abducted when Father Reynaldo Roda was killed last January was freed yesterday, police sources in the southern province of Tawi-Tawi said.

His family paid a ransom of 200,000 pesos (US$ 5,500) to the Muslim militants who had kidnapped him, the same who killed the clergyman during the attack.

Senior Superintendent Wainwright Taup, who is the local police chief and a relative of the victim, said that Omar Taup was found, unconscious, in a public market sometime between March 15 and 17

"He is still in a state of shock and refuses to talk to anyone," the police chief Taup said.

Ten members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf guerrillas are suspected to have carried out the abduction operation.

The teacher was abducted from a Catholic school in the Tawi-Tawi township of Tabawan. The gunmen shot and killed Reynaldo Roda, a Catholic priest, during the attack as he tried to stop them.

After the murder Pope Benedict XVI expressed great sadness over the event, calling on the "perpetrators to renounce the ways of violence and to play their part in building a just and peaceful society, where all can live together in harmony."