ZAMBOANGA CITY -- When their exhausted captors fell asleep, two of the Abu Sayyaf's last five hostages crawled to freedom on Good Friday night, officials said Saturday.
Cleofe Montulo and Emily Mantic, both Jehovah's Witnesses preachers, were recovered by Army soldiers at a checkpoint Saturday morning, some 12 hours after they made their escape.
Montulo, 49, and Mantic, 22, were among a group of seven Jehovah's Witnesses abducted by the bandit group while selling beauty products in Patikul, Sulu on Aug. 20, 2002. One escaped, while two were beheaded.
Mantic witnessed the beheading of her husband, Lionel, and Lemuel Montulo, Cleofe's brother-in-law, in August.
Jeizel, Cleofe's 12-year old son, couldn't be happier. "Even if she did not manage to attend my graduation, I am still happy," he said.
The ex-hostages told the military Saturday they had a chance to escape when their guards fell asleep on Friday evening.
"What they did was to put some clothes in their hammocks to make it appear that (they) were sleeping there. They then started to crawl until they reached the highway," Col. Joselito Bernardo, commander of the Army's 4th Infantry Battalion, told the Inquirer.
Bernardo said Mantic told him their initial goal was to reach Luuk town because they knew there were soldiers there. "But they got lost in the night so they decided to go there in the morning," he said.
According to Bernardo, Montulo and Mantic were found at a military checkpoint in downtown Jolo. He said the two women were on board a public utility jeep when soldiers conducting the checkpoint recognized them.
They were recovered at the Barangay Martirez checkpoint at around 11 a.m., Maj. Gen. Roy Kyamko, the new Southern Command chief, said.
Col. Nelson Allaga, commander of the 3rd Marine Brigade, said only Florida Montulo and Nori Bendijo, also Jehovah's Witnesses preachers, and Sipadan hostage Roland Ullah remained in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu. Ullah was abducted in April 2000.
He said the military was now using information given by Mantic to locate the bandit group.
Both the military and the President were quick to claim that unrelenting pursuit operations by the Armed Forces had made the escape possible.
"There was no firefight; they were able to escape from their captors due to continuous military operations," Kyamko told reporters in a phone interview.
Jolo Army commander, Col. Alexander Aleo, said the hostages might have been able to escape because of intense military operations and could have found their way to a residential area in Jolo where soldiers were conducting a security sweep.