Suspected ASG members nab Red Cross team outside Sulu Jail

Gunmen abducted three Red Cross workers from Italy, Switzerland and the Philippines on Jolo island. The Philippine National Red Cross chairman, Senator Richard Gordon, said the three were in a car on their way to Jolo airport.

The group of red cross workers were visiting a jail they were intercepted by a group on motorcycles, Gordon identified the three red cross members, as a group from, “the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as Swiss Andreas Notter, Italian Eugenio Vagni and Filipino Mary Jean Lacaba.”

The ICRC team had been at the Sulu provincial jail, Gordon said they had been workiing on a water and sanitation project to improve the conditions of detainees. The ICRC team traveling with Philippine National Red Cross Sulu Chapter personel when they were abducted not far from the gate of the jail. “They had been carrying out a water and sanitation project to improve the condition of detainees,” Gordon said.

Senator Gordon said that local red cross workers’ a driver and two others were released and reported the incident, “I Pam appealing to the Abu Sayyaf to free those people, because they are neutral in any conflict,” Gordon said. “They do not realize this but these people help them if they get wounded and get them out of the conflict areas,” he said. Prison visits have been done previously on a regular basis by ICRC in various detention facilities in Sulu provincial jail.