Freed Red Cross worker Eugenio Vagni hugs wife and kid after arriving in Manila, July 12, 2009

“Apo, you are free,“ 62-year-old Italian Red Cross worker Eugenio Vagni was told by his guards. It was 4 in the afternoon  Saturday, July 11, just four days shy of the half-year mark since he was abducted by the Abu Sayyaf, along with two other Red Cross volunteers in Jolo, Sulu, a few meters from the provincial capitol.

“Apo,” or grandfather in Tausug, was what Vagni would be called by his captors. But Vagni was careful not to raise his hopes too high. He said he had been told this line many times before, only to realize that his guards were only playing a cruel joke on him.

But at half past midnight of Sunday, July 12 , Vagni was indeed truly free. He was handed over to Sulu Vice-Governor Lady Anne Sahidula, who had also received fellow Abu Sayyaf hostage Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba three months earlier.

Vagni said Abu Sayyaf commander Al Bader Parad had told them in April that it was him, and not Lacaba, who was to be released first due to his ailment and age. But then, Al Bader changed his mind and released Lacaba instead. 

Vagni said he was a bit disappointed, but thought, too, that it was but right for the lone woman in the group to be released first. But on the plane ride from Jolo to Zamboanga, Vagni laughed, saying, “But I didn’t want to be the last!”

Notter release secret

Vagni was shocked to learn that  fellow hostage Swiss Andreas Notter had been freed three months earlier. He had only learned about it when he was brought to Camp Bautista in Busbos, Jolo for medical treatment last Sunday.

Up to the moment he was set free, Vagni was made to believe the Abu Sayyaf was still holding Notter. He was warned by his captors not to talk to the authorities because they were still keeping Notter.

Vagni said the Abu Sayyaf separated him and Notter when he began to be stricken with hernia and was slowing down the group.

Vagni said he was left with a group of about four to five guards. They walked very slowly and hid in different places in the jungle.  They were constantly on the move. He said there were times they would walk for almost twelve hours and would rest for only two hours before walking again, sometimes in the middle of the night. He would layer dried abaca leaves on the jungle ground for a makeshift bed with only a plastic sheet for his roof.

In an exclusive interview with ABS-CBN News, Vagni was very animated and talkative aboard the plane saying,”for three months, I would not talk to anyone, there was one guy who spoke English but his vocabulary was very limited. It was very difficult.”

At one point, Vagni found small slips of paper. “To feel alive, I was writing some thoughts to my wife.”  But as time passed, the ballpen ink ran out and there was no paper to write on. Their laptop computers were taken from them and they were only allowed to use them for the first twenty days of their captivity.

Facing death
 
The loneliness and the slow passage of time were major challenges, but none came close to the time he was stricken with cholera in May. Vagni said that for two weeks, he could not get up from his hammock. He was reduced to skin and bones that, at one point, he said, looking up as if to the heavens, “Ciao, Eugenio. There was nobody, no telephone, no hospital. Nothing.” 

Vagni said that by some miracle, someone came with special medicine to be injected into him and for him to be hydrated intravenously. He refused to disclose who this person was who came deep into the jungle to save his life.

He recovered from his bout with cholera but is still 20 kilos off his normal weight. He even managed to joke about his diet in captivity, “of rice and fish and fish and rice.” He said that he even came to love the soy sauce that would be poured on the rice as well as the rice left at the bottom of the pot mixed with sugar and water for dessert. “It tasted like candy.”

Key players in vagni's release, Major General Juancho Sabban, Commander Task Force Comet Brig General Eugene Clemen, 3rd Marine Brigade Andy De Rossi, Italian Businessman and Chairman, 3P Foundation

But Vagni said there was nothing better than the fruits that would fall off the trees like durian, marang and lanzones.

Vagni recalled his terror on the day an ultimatum was issued for the beheading of one hostage at the end of the month of  March. He feared it would be him, being the oldest in the group. He had told his fellow hostages that if it would be him, he hoped that at least he would be allowed to call his wife first.

And even if months passed and the Abu Sayyaf did not make good on its threat, Vagni said that in his mind, “I was always 'watching' my head in a big basket. The possibility was always there.”

Will to live

Tears welled in Vagni’s eyes when I asked him about his will to live throughout his six-month ordeal. "The will is to go back, to see my family, to see my wife and my daughter. This gives you big strength because you know that your family is there waiting for you.”

He said he is not more courageous than others, but just that being thrust into it, “you adapt to the situation, you have no choice. And you survive everything.” 

He also said he never lost faith in the efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Philippine government to obtain their freedom. But this faith was shaken when mortars began to land around them and bullets flew just inches above their heads.

“What crime have I committed? I am trying to help people and sacrifice for them? Why?” he would ask himself. But he would say to himself,  “it was only because I was in the wrong place at the right time.” 

In our conversation in the plane, we exchanged notes about our experiences in captivity.  Vagni recalled a phone interview I had with him and his two other companions while in captivity. He said, “I remember, you said to be strong and it was all a state of mind.” 

Vagni was also overtaken my emotion when he recalled the young soldiers who died in trying to rescue him and conveyed his condolences to their families

Vagni began his stint as an international humanitarian worker in 1999, working on water projects in predominantly Muslim communities in some of the world’s most conflict-ridden places. He had been to Afghanistan’s Khandahar region, Chechnya; Grozny; Somalia. But  it was in the southern Philippines that he was put in the most danger.

Pasa load

Still, Vagni holds no rancor toward the Abu Sayyaf nor the Philippines. “I cannot hate. In everyone of us, there is good. I love the Philippines. I love every country that I have been to.”

He said of the Abu Sayyaf, ”I don’t hate them because even though they kidnapped me, they treated me well because they shared with me the little that they had.”

He recalled how he learned the value of one peso, when he was desperate to text his wife to give him a call. Vagni said he could not send a text to her in Italy because it would cost 25 pesos. He said one of his guards offered his last peso load and used it to text  the ICRC in Manila in order to send a message to his wife to call him.

Vagni said he has also learned valuable life lessons in captivity. He intimated that before the kidnapping, he had wanted to work for a few more years, even past retirement age so as to be able to renovate his home.

But, he said, he is pondering retirement to enjoy time with his family, having realized the really important things in life. ”It is very beautiful to come back to life again. After this, I appreciate more what I have and also that I can do without many things.”