Gracia Burnham testifies

Gracia Burnham after testifying against the Abu Sayaff. Here, she prepares to board a car, with close-in security flanking her, for an undisclosed safehouse.

The Abu Sayaff couldn’t have laid their hands on her this time, even if they had wanted to.

Gracia Burnham came to the courthouse Thursday, July 29, under heavy guard. Her close-in security was composed of four FBI agents, plucked from their headquarters in Honolulu, Hawaii, and an undetermined number of NBI operatives. Some 20 elite police troopers, all brandishing assault rifles, surrounded them. Another 100 equally armed policemen and a pair of K-9 teams took care of perimeter security.

For good measure, Ms. Burnham donned a bullet proof vest under a blue blouse and a blackblazer. She sported a flowing floral skirt.

Ms. Burnham was the gang’s longest held hostage, having spent 377 days in captivity. She was freed by the military on June 7, 2002, following an intense firefight. Unfortunately, her husband, Martin, died in the cross-fire. Another hostage, Filipino nurse Ediborah Yap, also perished in the rescue operation.

The other American hostage, Guillermo Sobero, was beheaded earlier by the bandits to show they meant business.

After she regained her freedom, Ms. Burnham immediately flew to Wichita, Kansas, and there she buried her husband. She has stayed in that town ever since with her three children and other close relatives.

The Burnhams, missionaries of the Florida-based New Tribes Mission, had been abducted from Dos Palmas Resort in Palawan as they celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary. The couple were brought by the bandits, along with Sobero and 17 Filipino guests and employees of the establishment to the jungles of Basilan and held there for ransom.

Until the incident, Dos Palmas was a favorite destination of local and foreign tourists.

Martin and Gracia Burnham in the clutches of the Abu Sayyaf in the jungle

Ms. Burnham returned to the Philippines Monday, and recounted her ordeal three days later before Judge Lorifel Pahimna of the Pasig Regional Trial Court.

For security reasons, the hearing was held in a specially constructed courthouse at PNP Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig. The media, both local and foreign, were not allowed inside the perimeter fence. They had to take their shots with telephoto lenses from a distance.

Under direct examination, which lasted for two hours and a half, Mrs. Burnham identified Alhamzer Manatad Limbong alias Commander Kosovo, the leader, and five members of the Muslim kidnap group.

To date, most of the more than a hundred gang members remain at large.

Ms. Burnham also identified the two speedboats used by the kidnappers, one to bring them to Basilan and another to transport them from one part of the island to another in an effort to elude pursuing soldiers.

The kidnapping, and similar other incidents that followed in quick succession, demonstrated for all the world to see the audacity of the bandits on one hand and, on the other, the incompetence of the troops on the ground or corruption in the military leadership.

Other groups, emboldened by failure of the military to locate the Abu Sayaff in their mountain redoubt and neutralize them, made their own forays to get their own hostages.

A number of people simply walked in and became captives themselves.

Wilde Almeda, a televangelist, and his so-called prayer warriors came “to pray over and soften the hearts of the hostage taker.” Then there were those three members of a French television crew, who thought they could simply drop in for a quick interview and leave just as quickly to file their report.

All were thrown into the holding pen with the original kidnap victims.

To the growing public criticism, the military top brass countered the waters that separate the islands are so vast and the jungle is so thick that preventing other kidnappings and apprehending the criminals were not a simple matter. They may have a point there, but the excuse fell lame in the light of what happened a few months after the abduction.

The Abu Sayaff, with the hostages in tow, brought their wounded comrades to a hospital in Lamitan, Basilan, where local authorities got wind of their presence. The crisis could have ended right there, but the bandits slipped through a supposedly tight military cordon and went back to the jungle,bringing with them additional hostages, including Yap.

In her book, In the Presence of My Enemies, Ms. Burnham recounted having seen bundles of money delivered in crates, which, she learned later, amounted to P15 million for their ransom. Despite the payoff, however, the bandits refused to release her and her husband.

It was her impression that the Abu Sayaff upped the ante to accommodate demand by an unnamed general for a share of the loot. She also said she overheard the bandits saying the rice and other provisions the bandits live on were supplied by the military.

The government, frustrated over the duplicity, intensified the search and rescue operation. A combined police-army team subsequently cornered the bandits in a ravine.

After the smoke of battle cleared, the soldiers found Ms. Burnham crying over the dead body of her husband. The other hostages escaped in the confusion, but so did their captors.

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