Philippines charges suspects in priest kidnapping

ZAMBOANGA, Philippines – Philippine police have filed charges against three suspected Muslim separatist rebels accused of kidnapping an Irish missionary priest who was freed unharmed after being held for a month in the country's volatile south, the national police chief said Saturday.

The kidnapping-for-ransom and illegal detention charges were filed Friday against the three alleged members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front for the Oct. 11 kidnapping of the Rev. Michael Sinnott, police Director General Jesus Verzosa said.

Prosecutors will review the evidence to determine whether there is enough to file the case in court.

Verzosa said the three men were among six gunmen who seized Sinnott, a longtime missionary in the southern Philippines, from his residence in Pagadian in the Mindanao region, home to several armed groups fighting for Muslim self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

Mohagher Iqbal, head of the rebel group's negotiating panel for peace talks with the government, has denied guerrillas were involved in the abduction and said the group even exerted "moral pressure" on the kidnappers to release the 79-year-old missionary. On Thursday, rebel representatives handed Sinnott over to government authorities.

Officials had feared Sinnott, a member of the Mission Society of Saint Columban, could suffer a fatal heart attack because he was still recovering from heart bypass surgery.

Sinnott said his kidnappers demanded a $2 million ransom but he was not sure that any money changed hands. The Irish and Philippine governments and Iqbal said no ransom was paid.

Sinnott said he was held by two groups of kidnappers and they told him they had no other means of getting arms and bullets except by money from ransom. They told him they were fighting for an independent Islamic state, he said.

Verosa said investigators are still gathering evidence against five other Moro guerrillas _ three senior commanders and two who are wanted in connection with the 2007 kidnapping of Italian missionary priest Giancarlo Bossi.

The Philippines has grappled with a spate of kidnappings in the south this year, most of them blamed on al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants operating on islands farther south.

Among their victims were three International Red Cross workers and local teachers. On Monday, the militants allegedly beheaded a kidnapped schoolteacher on Jolo island after his family failed to raise enough ransom money.