Captive Priest Recalls Dismantling Bomb For ISIS in Marawi

[mdgspencer]

Priest recalls dismantling bomb for IS in Marawi | Inquirer News

Marawi City vicar general Fr. Teresito “Chito” Soganub recalled how he learned how to dismantle unexploded bombs from air strikes during his days as a captive of the Islamic State (IS)-inspired Maute group in Marawi.

The gunmen had asked him to dismantle a bomb, using a hacksaw, the most difficult task ever given to him as a captive.

"I told them it might explode if I tampered with it, [but] they said no, it will not explode, we are here beside you. If you die, we all die,” he said, quoting one of the gunmen. The bombs, he said, were as big as acetylene tanks.

Marawi was a city of 200,000 in the southern Philippines overrun by ISIS-affiliated Muslims in May 2017, a city mostly destroyed in the five-months battle that it took to defeat them. This priest was captured right at the beginning in the Catholic cathedral when the Islamic militants occupied it. He finally escaped from his captors in September.

 

[midori]

Interesting article. More details would have been interesting.

Still traumatized more than two months after his escape, Soganub said he never expected to live when he and 12 other hostages were made to form a line in the middle of a basketball court at Bangolo Plaza during their capture.
“I thought they would massacre us,” he said. “[There were] only the 13 of us and about 50 armed men in the plaza,” he told Inquirer on Thursday.
But the 57-year-old priest said nothing of the sort happened. Instead, he said his captors treated him well.
“They were respectful of me, they never harmed me,” he said. “This is not Stockholm syndrome, I’m just telling what I saw.”

So, no one’s going to be surprised if being an ISIS captive leads to feelings of trauma. But to say, “Yeah, they treated us well-- they were respectful of me-- no harm, y’know–” that’s reassuring to know, but it would be more helpful to explain the bits that might have gone poorly to others around him (?) that led to his not having recovered from the ordeal (which lasted how long?) two months later having escaped from it.

 

[Teek]

“Yeah, they treated us well-- they were respectful of me-- no harm, y’know–”

That seems to be a familiar mantra. Even in cases where we know it isn’t so. Like all of them.

This priest was made to disarm bombs with a hacksaw? But they were respectful of him. No harm.

I do not fault him for saying so! We just don’t need him to tell us he was mistreated!

I simply mean: even if he was incarcerated at a bed and breakfast during his captivity, they kidnapped him and held him captive May-September! They did not release him: he escaped!! He is a priest! Not a POW! I am glad they weren’t worse to him—they were bad enough as it is!!

That treatment was not respectful of him, and it does much harm, in and of itself. I’m furious that it is happening to people and give praise to God that he made it out safe!

May God bless him and restore him!