The body of a 24-year-old student languished in a Manila morgue for more than three months before the family of the deceased was notified.

"/> The body of a 24-year-old student languished in a Manila morgue for more than three months before the family of the deceased was notified.

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PHILIPPINES

Student’s body ‘forgotten’ in Manila morgue

The body of a 24-year-old student languished in a Manila morgue for more than three months before the family of the deceased was notified.

Published: 4 January 2012 10:24 CET

The parents of Alexander Reich, together with a team of international investigators, searched desperately for the 24-year-old man for more than three months, but he had died the same day he disappeared.

Filipino media have revealed that the body was discovered a few hours after Reich was shot in the head in Antipolo City, 25 kilometres from the capital Manila.

Local residents reported hearing gunshot and the sound of a vehicle leaving the area. When the police arrived at the scene, they found the body in a vacant lot, Inquirer News reports. 

Reich’s body was brought to the local morgue where it remained unidentified and forgotten for more than three months. It was not until Monday afternoon that the city’s deputy police chief informed the unit in charge of the investigation that they had located the victim’s body.

According to Inquirer News, the Antipolo police should have reported the body’s discovery to the National Capital Region Police Office, particularly since it involved a foreign national.

“It’s standard procedure,” said Ding Pascu, the police officer who led a search that involved Filipino, Swiss and American investigators.

The young man’s family revealed on Monday that the 24-year-old student was murdered on September 22nd, the day he disappeared. His parents released the tragic news on a Facebook page they had created to raise funds for the search, without giving additional information.

Zurich cantonal police told newspaper 20 Minutes on Monday evening that they had no further details on the circumstances surrounding Reich’s murder.

The family had initially remained silent, letting investigators do their job. However, on December 14th, the young man’s father, Manuel Reich, travelled to the Philippines and offered a reward of 4,250 francs ($4,540) to anybody who could provide information about his son’s whereabouts.

Reich had travelled to the Philippines in August to take a language course. The 24-year-old student from Brüttisellen, in canton Zurich, was regularly in touch with his family and friends in Switzerland.

The last piece of information came in the form of a text message he sent at 1am on September 22nd to a friend in Manila. “I am in a white car with friends — coming soon,” he wrote. But he never showed up.

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PHILIPPINES

Freed Norwegian handed over to Philippines envoy

The Norwegian man held for a year by Islamic militants in the Philippines was handed over to a government envoy on Sunday, along with three Indonesian seamen.

Published: 18 September 2016 08:23 CEST
Freed Norwegian handed over to Philippines envoy
Kjartan Sekkingstad may soon be reunited with his dogs. Photo: Private / NTB scanpix
Kjartan Sekkingstad and the  Indonesians, who had been held by Abu Sayyaf militants, were handed over to envoy Jesus Dureza in the town of Indanan on Jolo island, said an AFP reporter at the scene.
 
The transfer took place at the heavily guarded camp of another Muslim rebel leader Nur Misuari, whose group assisted in the release according to the government.
   
Sekkingstad was abducted from a high-end tourist resort which he managed in September 2015, along with two Canadians who were later beheaded. It was still unclear if the three freed Indonesians were the same ones kidnapped by armed men off a fishing trawler in Malaysian waters in July.
   
The Abu Sayyaf freed Sekkingstad on Saturday, handing him over to Misuari who is engaged in peace talks with the government and at whose camp he spent the night, Dureza said earlier.
   
Escorted by a small contingent of Jolo police, Dureza, Misuari, the freed captives and local officials met in a building surrounded by hundreds of Misuari's fighters from the Moro National Liberation Front before leaving for a military camp, the reporter said.
   
The military has said that after a medical check-up and debriefing, Sekkingstad would fly to the southern city of Davao to be received by President Rodrigo Duterte.
   
John Ridsdel and Robert Hall, the two Canadians seized with Sekkingstad, were beheaded after a ransom demand of about 300 million pesos ($6.5 million) was not met.
   
Duterte's spokesman Martin Andanar said in Manila that “the government maintains the no-ransom policy”.
 
“Now, if there is a third party like his family that paid, we do not known anything about that,” he told reporters.
   
Norwegian foreign affairs communications chief Frode Andersen told AFP by phone that “the Norwegian government does not pay ransom in this case or any other case”.
   
However a spokesman for the Abu Sayyaf was quoted in a local newspaper on Sunday as saying the group received 30 million pesos (about $625,000) for the Norwegian.
   
The Abu Sayyaf is a loose network of militants formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. It is based in remote Muslim-populated southern islands in the mainly
Catholic Philippines, and has earned millions of dollars in ransom from kidnappings — often targeting foreigners.
   
While its leaders have in recent years pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, analysts say the Abu Sayyaf is mainly focused on a lucrative kidnapping business rather than religious ideology.
   
The group, which is blamed for the worst terror attacks in Philippine history and is listed by the United States as a terrorist organisation, has been the target of a military operation since August.