ELITE TROOPS LAND IN JOLO

Hard-Hitting Force

JOLO, Sulu - The four remaining Jehovah's Witnesses abducted Tuesday
supposedly by drug addicts were sighted with their captors Saturday
morning, a ranking military officer reported.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, commander of the Army's 104th Infantry
Brigade, also said the hands of two of the four women captives were
bound. "I cannot tell who are those tied, but I presume they are the
younger women, Emily Mantic and Florida Montulo," he said.

Tolentino said that the military had started cordoning the area of the
sighting and that blocking forces had been set up where the
kidnappers, supposedly led by Abdulmuin Sahiron, a nephew of top Abu
Sayyaf commander Radulan Sahiron, were expected to pass.

"We have already pinpointed their location," Tolentino told the
Inquirer. "Maybe in a two or three days we might get them, hopefully."

He declined to name the specific areas, invoking "tactical
matters."

More than 30 soldiers belonging to the US-trained Light Reaction
Company (LRC) landed at the Jolo Airport at around 11 a.m.

They brought with them sophisticated combat equipment, including
night-vision goggles and sniper rifles fitted with laser scopes, not
available to regular troops.

As soon as the C-130 military cargo plane that carried them from
Basilan landed, a number of the elite soldiers secured the area before
the rest of the team disembarked.

Tolentino said the LRC would assist the 11 battalions of soldiers
tracking down the abductors of Cleofe and Florida Montulo, Nori
Bendijo and Emily Mantic, as well as remnants of the Abu Sayyaf.

"They are what we call the hard-hitting force," he said. "They may be
few but they are equipped and have received sophisticated training."

But in Manila, the militant fisherfolk group Pamalakaya wondered why
the military had to deploy battalions to go after supposed drug addicts.

"Why send 6,000 troops just to chase a band of addicts?" Pamalakaya
information chief Gerry Albert Corpuz said in a statement. "Perhaps
(Defense) Secretary (Angelo) Reyes and his group of puppet . . .
officials in the military are sick and tired of using the Abu Sayyaf
issue as an excuse to justify the state's stupid war."

Corpuz also said the police, and not the military, should have been
assigned the task of hunting down the supposed drug addicts.