Islamic Pursuits Put American in Rebel Hands

An e-mail romance and a fascination with Islamic revolution turned a dream into a nightmare for Jeffrey Craig Schilling, a UC Berkeley graduate dragged through the jungles of the southern Philippines today by a gang of professional kidnappers that has threatened to behead him.

But his chances of survival seemed to increase when Philippine soldiers at dawn rescued two French journalists, Jean-Jacques Le Garrec and Roland Madura, held with Schilling and 16 other hostages by Abu Sayyaf rebels on Jolo island. The Frenchmen were unharmed after more than two months in captivity and had been left behind as the guerrillas fled deeper into the jungle to avoid pursuit by government troops.

All indications were that the rebel leader, Ghalib Andang, a former bodyguard who calls himself Commander Robot, understood that he was running out of options in the face of the massive military assault to rescue the hostages and destroy the Abu Sayyaf gang. On Tuesday, he retained an attorney, Oliver Lozano, whose clients have included drug lords, high-profile rapists and Imelda Marcos, widow of former Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos.

“Robot is asking that he be assured of due process and the protection of his human rights,” Lozano said in an interview after his client called via satellite phone from Jolo. “If he is, and the bombing is stopped, that would be a strong justification to release the hostages under fair and reasonable circumstances. He has written the president twice expressing his willingness to negotiate.”

Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who has vowed to destroy Abu Sayyaf’s ability to raise money through kidnappings, earlier Tuesday opened the door to a settlement. “If they want to negotiate,” he told reporters, “they should release the hostages, and that’s when we can talk.”

Exactly what Schilling, the Berkeley graduate, hoped to accomplish when he walked into an Abu Sayyaf base camp on Jolo late last month with his new Muslim wife remains something of a mystery. But most Philippine and Western intelligence sources discount local media reports that Schilling is a CIA operative or an arms broker and believe that, as one put it, “he was just a naive young guy with very bad judgment.”

What is known is this, the sources say: Schilling, a 24-year-old Oakland resident, converted to Islam while in college and became fascinated with Abu Sayyaf, or “Father of the Sword,” a group of self-proclaimed Islamic ideologues that is dismissed by almost everyone else as little more than a gang of professional kidnappers. Cruising the Internet, he struck up an e-mail correspondence with a 22-year-old Filipina who shared his interests and seemed to know a lot about Abu Sayyaf.

She was Ivi Osani. When Schilling arrived in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines as a tourist in March to fulfill his dream of exploring the country’s southern Muslim provinces, they met in the southern city of Zamboanga, fell in love and married. It is not clear when or if Schilling learned that his wife had grown up on Basilan island, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold, and was a cousin of Abu Sabaya, the leader of a guerrilla faction that had kidnapped children, burned villages, beheaded teachers and disemboweled priests.

Through Osani, Abu Sabaya invited Schilling to the jungles of Jolo to meet his new in-laws at a family dinner. The couple arrived the morning of Aug. 28 after a tiring four-hour walk. The intelligence sources say Schilling believed that as an American and a Muslim convert his views of the world would be of interest to his in-laws. For his part, Schilling hoped to learn more about Jolo and the southern Philippines, which resisted Christianity and colonialism over four centuries.

The Abu Sayyaf movement had grown astoundingly rich from its kidnap business, collecting about $15 million in ransom during the period from early July to mid-September.

According to the intelligence sources, Schilling and his bride’s cousin began to argue almost immediately. Abu Sabaya challenged Schilling’s commitment to Islam, accused him of being a CIA agent and said he was unworthy of becoming part of the family. The bespectacled, 250-pound Schilling--who wears dreadlocks and a goatee and stands 6-foot-1--reportedly grew violent. It took six rebels to subdue him. He was handcuffed and put into a wooden cage.

“It was a trap, and Schilling fell for it hook, line and sinker,” said a Philippine intelligence officer, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the hostage crisis. “Abu Sabaya was overjoyed. He couldn’t believe his good luck. He had an American! He got on his cell phone and was telling friends, ‘If a European is worth $1 million, an American has got to be good for $10 million.’ ”

Osani, who is not believed to have set up her husband, was ordered back to Zamboanga city and is said to be disgusted by her cousin’s behavior, which included the public threat to behead Schilling if the army attacked. Schilling has been heard from only once since his kidnapping, on a tape released last week by Abu Sayyaf.

“Although I am kept in either chains or handcuffs, I am not mistreated,” he said. “The rebels are ready to compromise on their part. Use the Libyan government as the negotiators and end my captivity as soon as possible.”

Libya, which has previously supported Abu Sayyaf with arms and money, has paid $10 million in ransom--or “developmental aid,” as the government of strongman Moammar Kadafi called it--in the last three months to win the release of 10 Western hostages seized April 23. Schilling went on to say that the accusation that he belonged to the CIA was “absolutely false” and was based “on a misunderstanding due to my knowledge of the CIA’s past policies in the 1980s.”

Both the U.S. Embassy here and the State Department have maintained a low profile on the Schilling kidnapping in an effort to avoid increasing his value in the minds of the rebels. But the U.S. has received assurances from the Philippine government that the hostages’ safety is paramount in the military rescue operation, which is code-named Task Force Trident.

The operation has been complicated by the fact that the hostages have been split into several groups and that Abu Sayyaf itself has splintered into several gangs that are bickering over the distribution of the ransom. Schilling and a Filipino diving instructor who was kidnapped April 23 are the only hostages held by Abu Sabaya’s faction, which operated on nearby Basilan island until a military attack last spring forced the guerrillas to flee to 345-square-mile Jolo.

Besides Schilling, Abu Sayyaf is holding 12 Philippine Christian evangelists from a group known as Jesus Miracle Crusade and three Malaysians. Most of the hostages, like Schilling, are what government negotiators call “walk-ins”--people who entered rebel territory voluntarily.

With the release of 20 foreign hostages recently, columnist Alexander Mango wrote Tuesday, “the configuration has shifted. The remaining hostages constitute tolerable costs.”