Rebels make contact with Fr Sinnott's Columban mission

THE GUNMEN holding Wexford priest Fr Michael Sinnott have made contact with his Columban mission, authorities have said, as rebel Muslims accused of holding the cleric strongly deny their involvement in his abduction.

Reports in the Philippines appeared to confirm that Fr Sinnott (79) was still alive, while security forces say that four of the six gunmen who snatched the priest have been identified.

The local crisis management committee is now in the process of communicating with the kidnappers.

Maj Gen Benjamin Dolorfino, who has been the main source of information from the Philippines armed forces in the case so far, believed that he was being held in the coastal town of Sultan Naga Dimaporo in Lanao del Norte province, where Muslim separatists are active.

Authorities were to distribute flyers today in the province across the bay from where Fr Sinnott was kidnapped last Sunday, with telephone numbers the kidnappers can call to arrange for medicine to be sent to him.

Mohagher Iqbal, leader of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front, has promised to help find Fr Sinnott as fears grow for his health. He has recently undergone heart bypass surgery. He did not have his medicines on him when gunmen dragged him away from the garden of his house in the gated community compound in Pagadian city where he lives.

Mr Iqbal told local media he would kill the kidnappers for the damage they had done to his group’s reputation while the liberation front is adamant it is not holding the missionary. The police said they would be pleased if the group assisted them in their efforts to track down Fr Sinnott.

They believed that the kidnappers apparently took Fr Sinnott to an area under the control of a local Moro rebel commander, a known pirate.

“The least he can do is to drive away the kidnappers if he is not involved and the most he can do is to help us capture them,” Mr Dolorfino, who is in charge of the region’s efforts to quell the rebels’ activities, said of the commander.

Liberation front spokesman Eid Kabalu told local media: “We do not deny the fact that there is a presence of the in the area and a . . . front . . . community there but it is not true that the . . . front . . . is holding the priest.”

The rebels and the government just a few months ago fought major clashes that killed hundreds and displaced more than half a million people. A truce eased the fighting. The government has used the ceasefire committee to ask the rebels for help in ending the latest hostage crisis.

Foreign priests in the volatile southern Philippines have been regular targets over the years.

A Filipino priest was beheaded by Muslim separatists Abu Sayyaf, while, in 2001, kidnappers killed Fr Sinnott’s fellow Irish Columban Fr Rufus Halley from Waterford when he tried to escape.

Fr Halley, a linguist, spent more than 20 years promoting dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Asia before he was shot in Mindanao.

In June 2007, kidnappers with links to Moro rebels held an Italian priest for 33 days.

Foreign Affairs spokesman and Labour Party president Michael D Higgins issued an emotional appeal yesterday for Fr Sinnott’s release and asked the abductors to provide him with medicine.

Fr Sinnott has spent about 40 years in the Philippines, first arriving in Mindanao in 1957 as a missionary. After a stint elsewhere, he came back to the Philippines in 1976 and never left.