Philippines kidnapping survivor tells his story
FOR FIRST TIME, KIDNAP VICTIM TELLS OF HIS CANADIAN FRIENDS AND THEIR CAPTIVITY
IF HE DOESN’T GET MORE MONEY HE’S GOING TO CHOP MY HEAD OFF. IF HE GETS A LITTLE MORE, THEY CUT MY ARMS OFF. — KJARTAN SEKKINGSTAD, HOSTAGE
Run, duck. Run, duck.
Deep in the jungles of Sulu province, in the southern Philippines islands, Kjartan Sekkingstad pushed through darkness in search of a way out.
It was April 2016, seven months after armed Islamist militants had kidnapped the Norwegian, along with two Canadian men and a Filipina woman, in a high profile hostage-for-ransom case.
Sekkingstad saw his chance to escape when Philippines military forces launched a middle-of-the-night air assault on the group, sending his captors fleeing all directions.
“I got away from the guy who was watching me. He ran for cover himself. And I was sort of free,” Sekkingstad, then 56, said.
As he fought through dense brush in darkness, he had to dodge machine gun fire from the helicopters above. Like a scene out of a war movie, tracer bullets zigged and zagged in every direction. It was “total chaos,” he recalled. But his freedom was short-lived. He soon stumbled upon one of his fellow captives, Canadian John Ridsdel, a man with whom he’d developed a close bond.
Ridsdel had suffered a broken rib in the attack. Sekkingstad couldn’t leave his “soul mate” behind.
“I got him on my shoulder … and we walked back,” Sekkingstad said. “I did not escape. I could not leave my friend.”
Less than 24 hours later, on April 25, 2016, Sekkingstad watched helplessly as Ridsdel said goodbye to his two grown daughters and was led away by the militants and beheaded — the first of two executions.
Robert Hall, the other Canadian among the hostages, would be executed on June 13, 2016.
“What can I say? We were all sad,” Sekkingstad said. “But we didn’t have time to mourn him, because we were so busy surviving … We were told right away, ‘You’re next! You’re next!”
It’s been almost a year since Sekkingstad’s release from captivity and he agreed to speak in-depth about his ordeal for the first time with the National Post.
We meet at his family’s seafood processing plant on Sotra, a quiet Norwegian island, just west of Bergen. Tall, lanky, with deep-set eyes, Sekkingstad appears relaxed as he skippers his aging workboat through quiet channels that have been travelled by his family for generations.
But his demeanour changes as he slowly recounts the horror of being in captivity for almost a year. He frequently pauses to gather his thoughts. He nervously picks at his fingernails. His shoulders tense up.
The ordeal started late on the evening of Sept. 21, 2015, at the Holiday Oceanview Marina, a boat resort on Samal Island, in the southern Philippines.
Sekkingstad helped build and manage the marina with the family of his late common-law wife, Ellen LeeKwen Bangayan, who had passed away suddenly in 2013 from a blocked brain vessel.
Sekkingstad already had a strong Canadian connection. Years earlier, he worked for a fish farming company on the B.C. coast. He fell in love with the west coast wilderness and spent more than 12 years there. It is also where he met Bangayan, an office manager at the same company.
The couple spent five years sailing around the world together on Sekkingstad’s 48-foot yacht, Wiskun, before settling in Bangayan’s native Philippines in 2007.
The marina, which opened in 2011, was a safe place for boaters to park their vessels because of its location south of the typhoon belt.
That night, he was awoken by his barking Labrador dog, Sheeba. “So I got up on deck and at that point, I heard somebody calling, ‘Help! Help!’ It was a male. I just ran to see if I could help this person.”
The cries were coming from an American man staying at the marina with his Japanese wife.
As Sekkingstad ran toward them, he saw they were being manhandled by a couple of “small guys.”
“At this point, I didn’t quite know, I thought it was some petty theft or somebody wanted to grab a wallet. I thought I could … clear it up.”
That’s when John Ridsdel, who earlier that day had taken his new catamaran for a spin with his Filipina girlfriend, emerged from the shadows.
“Be careful, they have guns,” Ridsdel warned, a gun pointed at his own head.
Moments later, another couple — Robert Hall and his Filipina girlfriend, Marites Flor — emerged from their boat with guns pointed at them.
The gunmen decided to let the American-Japanese couple go — they had been badly beaten — and took Sekkingstad instead.
Listed as a terrorist entity by Canada in 2003, Abu Sayyaf is a loose collection of violent, autonomous gangs spread across the southwestern Philippines. Formed in the 1990s with funding from al-Qaida, the group has become notorious in recent years for its use of kidnap-for-ransom as a way to make money.
A year earlier, the same group kidnapped and held a German couple on Jolo Island, freeing them after reportedly receiving a substantial ransom payment.
The four hostages were forced into a cramped, dank compartment underneath the vessel. For three days, they remained holed up in the boat’s fish compartment, cold and wet.
Their captors asked for their names and backgrounds.
Ridsdel, 68, who was born in London and raised in Saskatchewan, was a semi-retired mining consultant with a passion for sailing.
Hall, 66, a Calgary native, was a retired tradesman and actor. He had arrived at the marina with Flor at the beginning of the year.
Sekkingstad led his captors to believe he was a mechanic at the marina without a family (he has a brother, two sisters and elderly parents). For months, his captors were also under the false impression that he was Canadian, something he did not bother to correct.
When they finally reached land, a cadre of armed fighters greeted their fellow fighters from the boat with hugs and congratulations.
The hostages were whisked up a mountain in a jeepney and forced to march into the jungle all night. At daybreak, they finally set up camp and were allowed to get some rest.
Over the next several months, the group was constantly on the move, never staying in the same spot more than a few days.
“Most of the time, they’re trying not to expose themselves to clear skies and open areas. Whenever there’s a campsite, there’s trees and coverage so helicopters or planes cannot spot them,” Sekkingstad said.
Sekkingstad kept track of the days in his head. “That was my job. I knew exactly what day it was. I kept on counting,” he said.
At night, the hostages would be handcuffed together: Hall with Flor and Ridsdel with Sekkingstad. If one person had to relieve themselves, they would have to wake up the other person.
“They had guards watching us all the time, keeping us awake on purpose, just to break us down physically and mentally.
“The weaker we become, the more they laugh. They think it’s funny like hell.”
When they felt they it was safe, the militants would bring their wives and children to the campsites to visit. The wives would sometimes bring fresh vegetables and small amounts would be shared with the hostages.
Among the militants, there was a clear hierarchy. One of the junior fighters — a skinny, arrogant man who the hostages came to know as “Abu Omar” — served as the hostages’ liaison to the group’s leaders.
He also appeared as a spokesman in ransom videos, wearing a mask.
The first ransom video was posted October 2015. One of the militants is holding a machete near Ridsdel’s head. The hostages and one of the masked fighters take turns urging the Philippines government to stop its military assaults.
“We were told what to say (on the video),” said Sekkingstad. They were beaten if they didn’t.
“If you behave, you’re a good boy, say what they want you to say on the video, you get an extra cracker or cookie, like treats to your dog.”
A second video released the following month came with a more dire warning: If the kidnappers did not receive 1 billion pesos — C$25 million — for each hostage, they would kill them.
In Sotra, Sekkingstad’s family, working with various Norwegian and Philippines government and police officials, focused on what tactic to adopt.
At one point, the anti-kidnapping division of the Philippines National Police presented the families with eight different options, said Sekkingstad’s brother, Odd-Kare.
“It put us in a difficult situation,” he said.
In the jungle, Ridsdel had received encouraging words by phone from staff at the Canadian embassy in the Philippines. They indicated they were working on “nothing else” but this case, Sekkingstad said. They also gave the hostages a hotline they could call to reach a third party assisting in the negotiations, a person named “Joon.”
“John and me … we became like soulmates,” Sekkingstad said. “We were thinking about — planning is not the right word — maybe dreaming, what we were going to do when we got out of there.”
Ridsdel had a boat he wanted to sell. They talked about sailing it to Malaysia together and putting it on the market there.
Ridsdel also talked nonstop about his daughters — his “little girls.”
“I had to remind him they’re not little girls anymore,” Sekkingstad said.
In March 2016, a third video was released showing Ridsdel, Hall and Sekkingstad bearded, shirtless and skeleton-thin.
Ridsdel made a direct appeal to the Canadian prime minister to “do as needed to meet their demands within one month or they will kill me, they will execute us.”
The following month, a fourth ransom video, with a specific deadline, was released. The hostages made a “final urgent appeal” to pay the kidnappers 300 million pesos — C$8 million — for each of the hostages by 3 p.m. on April 25. “They will behead me,” Ridsdel says in the grainy video.
With the introduction of a deadline, “we are thinking, this is getting serious now,” Sekkingstad said.
“I remember John tried (to think) where we could raise money. He gave the names and addresses for former employers, his daughters of course … to see if he can raise some money and save our lives.”
But the third party the hostages had been in contact with was not so encouraging now, telling them they couldn’t meet the captors’ target.
The day before the deadline, the spokesman for the fighters put Ridsdel on the phone with one of his daughters.
“Say goodbye to your father,” the spokesman said. “He will be beheaded tomorrow if you don’t have 300 million pesos by tomorrow.”
That afternoon, the militants spotted a drone flying over their campsite. They packed up and were on the move. Hours into their trek, Filipino military forces launched their air attack. Three helicopters swooped in from different directions, unleashing a volley of machine gun fire.
“They shot at everything. … They couldn’t tell the difference. Blasted whatever they could,” Sekkingstad said.
Given the aerial assault the night before, the hostages hoped their captors would let the first deadline pass.
But as it approached, the kidnappers took Ridsdel and handcuffed him. They put him on the phone one final time with his daughter in Canada.
“Bring 300 million right now,” Sekkingstad overheard the spokesman saying into the phone.
“We don’t have that much,” his daughter replied back.
“Whatever you have, send it. … Whatever you can get together,” Sekkingstad heard Ridsdel saying.
The spokesman broke in: “If you don’t have enough, don’t bother.”
“(John) said goodbye to his daughters. ‘Love you all. Had a great life. Don’t blame yourself. You’ve done the best you could to save my
life.’ I remember he said … ‘the Canadian government sucks.’ He said that too. He probably had reason to say it.
“Then Robert, me and Marites were ordered to lay flat on the ground. And they walked John a little bit away. But not far enough. We could still hear his cries.”
Later that night, “we saw the leader come back cleaning all the blood off his knife. Then we knew for sure that it’s …” Sekkingstad said, his voice trailing off.
In Norway, upon receiving the grim news of Ridsdel’s death from Norwegian police, Sekkingstad’s family prepared for worst-case scenarios.
They had decided not to engage the kidnappers directly until the later stages.
Meanwhile, the family had been working to pool money together privately. Odd-Kare declined to go into specifics, but said the Norwegian government was not a participant. Like Canada, it has an official policy of not paying ransoms to terrorists.
In one phone conversation, the brothers knew the captors were listening in. “The purpose of that call was to tell the terrorists there was nothing more. We’ve got everything — even got (Kjartan’s) money saved in Canada,” Odd-Kare said.
Another video was released in May 2016. Hall appeals to Rodrigo Duterte, the newly elected president of the Philippines since, “it appears my government has abandoned me and my family in this endeavour.” Another deadline is given, of 3 p.m., June 13.
That day, the militants tricked Hall, telling him that he was going back to Canada. Then they slapped cuffs on him before he was able to put up any resistance. They allowed Flor to give Hall a final hug and then led him away.
Ten days after Hall’s execution, they freed Flor.
Over that summer, negotiations intensified to secure Sekkingstad’s release. One of the leaders issued a blunt warning to negotiators.
“If he doesn’t get more money he’s going to chop my head off,” Sekkingstad said. “If he gets a little more, they cut my arms off. If they get a bit more, they can send me off with one arm. This goes on and on.”
Then, one day in September 2016, the militants escorted him to a rendezvous point and handed him over to members of the Moro National Liberation Front, a former rebel group now working with the Philippines government.
“You’re with them now,” he was told. The Abu Sayyaf fighters then disappeared back into the bushes.
It is not clear how much was paid to secure his release. Media reports suggested between 30 and 50 million pesos — C$700,000 to $1 million — but Sekkingstad’s brother said there were inaccuracies in the reports.
They wouldn’t go into specifics, but the Sekkingstad family credited a one-on-one meeting they had with the Philippines peace minister, Jesus Dureza, in Oslo, in the late stages of the kidnapping for bringing a resolution to the case. The meeting was arranged by Norway’s foreign minister.
Looking back, Sekkingstad said he understands why governments have adopted a policy of not negotiating with terrorists. But he said he can’t help feel that governments should be flexible.
“When people are trapped in a situation, it is like getting a death sentence, because there is no way out.”
His kidnappers have not been caught.
JOHN AND ME ... WE BECAME LIKE SOULMATES.