Hostage freed after one-year captivity hell
INDANAN, Philippines: A Norwegian man freed by militants after a year of jungle captivity yesterday described the ordeal as “devastating”, carrying a backpack with a bullet hole as a reminder of a neardeath experience that included the beheadings of the two Canadians kidnapped with him.
Kjartan Sekkingstad was released on Saturday to rebels from the larger Moro National Liberation Front, which has signed a peace deal with the government and helped negotiate his release.
He was yesterday handed over to Philippine authorities, along with three Indonesian fishermen freed by the Abu Sayyaf militants.
Aside from the horror of constantly being warned he would be the next to be beheaded by the extremists, Sekkingstad said he survived more than a dozen clashes between Philippine forces and his captors in the lush jungles.
In one intense battle, in which Philippine forces opened fire from assault helicopters and from the ground, he said he felt a thud in his back. He thought he was hit by gunfire but after the fighting eased, he discovered that he wasn’t hit, and that his army-style backpack had been pierced by the gunfire instead.
The heavily bearded Sekkingstad was carrying the damaged backback when he walked to freedom in the thick jungle off Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town.
“Devastating, devastating,” Sekkingstad, clad in a rebel camouflage uniform and muddy combat boots, said when asked how he would describe the horrific experience.
Philippine presidential adviser Jesus Dureza, who received the four freed captives, accompanied the Norwegian on a flight to the city of Davao, where the ex-hostage was to meet President Rodrigo Duterte.
Sekkingstad was kidnapped from a yacht club he helped managed on southern Samal Island on September 21 last year, along with Canadians John Ridsdel and Robert Hall and Hall’s Filipino girlfriend Marites Flor, sparking a massive land and sea search by Philippine forces.
The Abu Sayyaf demanded a huge ransom for the release of the foreigners, and released videos in which they threatened the captives in a jungle clearing where they displayed Islamic State group-style black flags.
Ridsdel was beheaded in April and Hall was decapitated in June after ransom deadlines lapsed. When Flor was freed in June, she recounted in horror how the militants rejoiced while watching the beheadings.
Sekkingstad said he and his fellow captives were forced to carry the militants’ belongings and were kept in the dark on what was happening around them. At one point, he said, their heavily armed captors numbered more than 300. “We were treated like slaves,” he said.
After the militants decapitated Ridsdel, Sekkingstad was threatened by the militants, who repeatedly told him “You’re next.” It was not immediately clear whether Sekkingstad had been ransomed off.