DAVAO CITY — As of Wednesday, seven of the eleven (11) passengers, of a boat loaded with smuggled cigarettes are still missing after the suspected pirates hijacked their boat on a secluded beach in the town of Datu Blah Sinsuat in the province of Maguindanao del Norte.
The survivors told police authorities on Monday that pirates hijacked their boat and ordered them to abandon the seacraft loaded with smuggled goods in the western seas of Maguindanao del Norte province.
Four companions of the seven missing men namely, Rasiden Asdali, Tawasil Jumadil, Yahya Hadjulani and Gadjer Sampang, were rescued by fishermen while swimming towards a barangay in the seaside Datu Blah Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte.
The survivors are now in the custody of the local police.
The four Tausug boatmen had readily confessed to investigators in the Datu Blah Sinsuat Municipal Police Station that they were supposed to deliver of 100 large boxes of cigarettes with Indonesian brands from Zamboanga Sibugay province when men on smaller motorized boats came to them and ordered the passengers to jump overboard and towed their boat towards the nearby Bongo Island in the territory of Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte.
The survivors told police investigators that seven of their companions who jumped into the sea are missing.
“We have reported to the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and to the Maritime police unit in Cotabato City that seven companions of these four men now in our custody are missing,” Captain Abdulbasit Kulod, chief of the Datu Blah Sinsuat MPS, told reporters on Tuiesday on a phone interview.
Kulod said local officials in Datu Blah Sinsuat have assured to help facilitate the return of Asdali, Jumadil, Hadjulani and Sampang to their families in Zamboanga
