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Hostages Recall Months in CaptivityAugust 29, 2000 By Jim Gomez CEBU, Philippines (AP) — Monique Strydom and her husband, Callie, were relaxing after a day of scuba diving at a Malaysian resort when guerrillas armed with bazookas appeared and took them and 19 others hostage, herding them into speedboats. The 20-hour overnight sea journey that followed was a decent into terror and despair that would last for four months in the jungles of the southern Philippine island of Jolo, the South African couple and three other Westerners recalled after their release this week. ``It was terrifying,'' Monique Strydom said. While still in the boats during the April 23 abduction, some guerrillas began taking watches, necklaces and other valuables from the hostages, said Sonia Wendling, a French woman. On Jolo, the hostages — many still in beach clothes and barefoot — were forced to hike through the jungle to a remote hut in Talipao, a stronghold of their Abu Sayyaf guerrilla captors. Army soldiers surrounded the area and exchanged mortar and gunfire with the guerrillas. Most hostages call that moment one of the most terrifying of their captivity. ``We saw the bullets piercing the leaves,'' said Monique Strydom. ``We crawled and ran away from the hut.'' ``The rebels were using us as human shields,'' said her husband, Callie. The military withdrew from the area after the hostages' governments appealed for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. But the hostages' ordeal went on. Wendling said some hostages couldn't cope with despair and fear, including her French boyfriend, Stephane Loisy, who at one time tried to hurt himself, driving her to tears. The hostages were forced to travel by foot for long hours to evade the army. Once, a Finnish hostage suffered a deep cut on his foot when he stepped on a sharp rock. The cut bled profusely until a piece of cloth slowed the bleeding. The hostages dodged snakes, scorpions and spiders. A Malaysian hostage — one of nine Malaysians abducted from the diving resort — was bitten by a scorpion. His companion burned the wound with a cigarette to neutralize the poison. Monique Strydom said that during her captivity she read 34 books sent by relatives and her government. Her husband, a bird expert, used to wander through the jungle teaching young guerrillas how to identify birds. She said stress and a lack of proper food caused her to miss her menstrual period for several months, leading her to wrongly suspect she was pregnant. Werner Wallert, a geography teacher from Goettingen, Germany, said he jogged down and up a mountain slope every morning to keep fit. Every time he climbed back, panting, young rebels would yell, ``You made it, grandfather.'' Wallert was taken from the Sipadan resort along with his wife and son. His wife, Renate, who was ill most of the time, was released July 17 — their 34th wedding anniversary. On Monday, six hostages — the sixth was a French journalist abducted last month — boarded a Libyan Ilyushin jet in Cebu city to fly to Tripoli to meet with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who helped secure their freedom, reportedly paying a ransom of $1 million for each hostage. A military band played, and the former captives — each carrying rice sacks, a hammock and a long native knife as reminders of their jungle nightmare — waved and blew kisses before going on board. ``This is the best day of my life,'' Callie Strydom said on reaching freedom. ``But we feel this is not over yet until the others are out.'' |
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