[SMH | Text-only index]   

Kidnap victim left in dark

Date: December 31 2012

A retired Australian soldier has been held captive for more than a year, write Deborah Snow and Ilya Gridneff.

The man on the video screen manages to look dejected, defeated and yet somehow defiant, all at the same time.

His voice is husky and strained, and occasionally he rolls his eyes heavenward as he delivers his lines in the manner of an unenthusiastic actor going through the motions for a director he despises.

When he has finished, there is a pause. The pale curtain behind him billows slightly. There are faint sounds of shrilling insect life in the background. He looks at the mysterious presence behind the camera, and says, contemptuously, ''Is that it?''

The video, uploaded onto the internet on Boxing Day, is the first sign in months that former Australian soldier Warren Rodwell, who had been drifting and working around Asia for years before his kidnapping in the southern Philippines just over a year ago, is still alive.

Though he looks more gaunt than in photos taken before his capture, there seems to be fight in him yet.

One person running a practised eye over the footage late this week was Neil Fergus, whose security advisory company Intelligent Risks has gained expertise handling other kidnapping cases in Asia.

''It's absolutely genuine and his reactions are not atypical for someone who has been in captivity for that period of time,'' Fergus said, after looking at the video several times.

''He is evincing some signs of slight disorientation, and significant frustration. I understand that he is a fairly resilient character and I think that came through a bit, with his somewhat bellicose statement, towards the end, that personally he didn't care any more.''

In the video, Rodwell says few of those around him speak English, and that while some negotiations might be under way, he has no up to date information.

He adds that he no longer trusts the Australian government or his original kidnappers, the Abu Sayyaf group.

Fergus believes Rodwell has ''probably had very little communication for over a year, other than gesticulation and shoves and prods''.

Yet the fact that the video has surfaced indicates, for some observers, that a deal might be in the making, and that the footage might have been provided as ''proof of life''.

Rodwell's family has gone to ground (he has an ex-wife and grown children in Australia) and Canberra is saying little.

The Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, welcomed ''confirmation of Mr Rodwell's welfare'', said the government was ''assisting Philippines authorities where appropriate'' but that further comment would not be ''helpful''.

Those familiar with official operations say Canberra will almost certainly have set up a special incident task force involving the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Federal Police and other key agencies.

''They don't want to conduct that business in public, I understand that,'' Fergus said ''But they need to ensure that the Abu Sayyaf group know they are working closely with the authorities, that we do care about Mr Rodwell as an Australian citizen, and that despite the Australian government's policy of not paying ransoms - which I agree with 100 per cent - they are in a position to potentially do something in terms of aid projects in Mindanao.

''One of the aces we have got up our sleeve is the aid program. It should be in play.''

Rodwell was snatched from his most recent home, in a village near the seaside town of Ipil, in December last year by a small posse of gunmen posing as policemen.

Ipil is close to Zamboanga on the southern end of the island of Mindanao, an area described by Deakin University's Professor Damien Kingsbury as ''kidnapping central''.

Those who know the terrain well believe Rodwell was probably initially taken to Basilan Island, to the south-west, part of the Sulu Archipelago comprising hundreds of small islands, reefs and cays between the southern Philippines and the coast of Malaysia.

Here, locals have supplemented their incomes for centuries by kidnapping and piracy, and it is a prime haunt for Abu Sayyaf, an extreme Islamist group which wants an independent sharia state in its corner of the Philippines.

Kidnapping, Kingsbury said, was ''how they make a living … and how they have always made a living. It's historical and cultural factors at play legitimised with a religious agenda.''

But the agendas of Abu Sayyaf and more mainstream separatist groups like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front also feed on sentiments of dispossession among poor Muslim farmers, who have been displaced by Christian transmigration to the area.

Abu Sayyaf probably has at most 350 members but it stays under the watchful eye of the US and the Manila government, not least because of occasional links with individual operatives from Jemaah Islamiah.

Its most notorious exploit was the kidnapping of 20 tourists and staff from a resort island off the Malaysian coast in 2000.

A counter-terrorism analyst, Professor Clive Williams of Macquarie University, said Basilan is mountainous and forested and that Abu Sayyaf enjoyed support from local villagers.

''When they get a payout, the local economy prospers,'' said Williams, a former Defence official. ''The money finds its way to local officials who get paid off, and it's not easy to go in and do a raid and rescue in a place like that. It's not like Somalia.''

As a westerner, Rodwell would have been a tempting and obvious target. (The Department of Foreign Affairs advises Australians not to travel to the area.) In June 2011, he had married Miraflor Gutang, then 27, but local police said the marriage was in trouble within months.

Shortly after Rodwell's kidnapping on December 5 last year, the then local police chief Edwin Verzon said Gutang had filed two complaints of abuse against Rodwell and Gutang's parents said she had moved out of their shared house just two weeks previously.

Verzon was later sacked for his comments and the local governor imposed a blackout on news coverage, seemingly at Canberra's request.

Infantry commander Major General Ricardo Rainier Cruz said efforts to locate Rodwell were continuing but ''the kidnappers have been constantly moving from one location to another and that is our problem now''.

He also said Abu Sayyaf might be using Rodwell as a ''human shield.''

However, others believe his original kidnappers might have on-sold Rodwell, possibly to criminal gangs, because of the contemptuous remark he makes about Abu Sayyaf towards the end of the videotape.

Dr Bob East, an independent researcher on counter-insurgency in the southern Philippines who returned from the region earlier this month, believes this is the case.

''In the tape he says he doesn't trust Abu Sayyaf,'' East said. ''That's pretty rude if that was them operating the camera. He's probably been on-sold a number of times. The original gang probably identified as Abu Sayyaf personnel, but the current group, who knows?

''They could be just criminals trying to make a buck.''

At the time time of Rodwell's capture the initial asking price was $US23,000 ($22,163), though it later escalated to $US2 million.

East is critical of Canberra's attempts to keep negotiations - if there are any - under wraps, saying ''whichever group has him might think he is not worth anything if the coverage goes quiet. The more publicity you can give this man, the better chance he has for survival.''

Others strongly disagree. Dr Tony English of Flinders University's business school, who also claims some experience in hostage negotiations, said Rodwell's life could be put at risk by too public a media profile at this delicate juncture.

Carr's caution might be partially a legacy of the criticism Australian authorities copped after the death of backpacker David Wilson in Cambodia in 1994.

While a recent Victorian coroner's report exonerated the Department of Foreign Affairs of mishandling the case, the bruises from that experience linger.

With Rodwell's life in the balance after a year in captivity, the only certainty is that every step towards freedom continues to be a fraught one.

with Al Jacinto in Zamboanga City


[ SMH | Text-only index]