Jun
Good news for everyone following up on the Ces Drilon Kidnapping in Sulu. Today, Cecilia “Ces” Drilon, her cameraman and a university professor accompanying them walked out of the forest where they had been held for nine days shortly before midnight, regional police commander Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao told reporters.
He said the three “looked fine” and had been picked up from a village in the southern island of Jolo, but would not say if ransom money changed hands.
Their kidnappers were understood to have demanded about 1.12 million dollars in ransom for the ABS-CBN network host and her two colleagues, setting a Tuesday deadline and threatening to behead them if this was not met.
Senator Loren Legarda, a friend of the broadcaster, told the station in an interview that she secretly negotiated for the release of the hostages.
“I appealed, I cajoled, I threatened by telephone,” said Legarda, adding the kidnappers were “pressured” by her unspecified local contacts into freeing the three.
“These people do not have an ideology. This is pure banditry,” she said.
Drilon, her cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama, and university professor Octavio Dinampo, were heading to a secret meeting with a senior leader of the Abu Sayyaf Islamic group when they were seized on June 8.
The experience must have been an ordeal to Ces Drilon and her crew. This experience, among many other experiences by media men should serve as a lesson for them to be more careful next time when they thread uncharted territories. Being a news personnel on the field is not an easy job. Your most precious possession can be lost at an instant – your life.
Media men should be given protection and proper training to protect themselves in unforeseen events like this. We hope here that Ces Drilon and her crew are all ok. 
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Tags: Ces Drilon, Ces Drilon Freed, hot celebrities, Pinay, world news
One Response to "Ces Drilon and Crew Freed by Kidnappers"
June 18th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Oh well at least walang buhay na nawala. Salamat naman.
[Reply]