MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Muslim militants in the southern Philippines have released a teacher kidnapped in a January school attack that killed a Roman Catholic priest, police said.
Senior Superintendent Wainwright Taup, the police chief of the southern province of Tawi-Tawi, said Thursday that suspected al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf guerrillas released Omar Taup after his family paid a ransom of 200,000 pesos (US$4,880).
The police chief, a distant relative of the teacher, said Omar Taup was dropped off in a public market sometime between March 15 and 17.
"He is still in a state of shock and refuses to talk to anyone," the police chief was quoted as saying by the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The teacher was abducted on Jan. 15, when about 10 Abu Sayyaf gunmen raided a Catholic school in the Tawi-Tawi township of Tabawan. The gunmen shot and killed Reynaldo Roda, a Catholic priest, during the raid.
Roda's death was later eulogized by Pope Benedict XVI.
His killing highlighted the risk faced by Christian missionaries in the southern Philippines, where Muslim separatists have been fighting for a separate homeland for decades. Roda was the third Catholic missionary killed in the south in recent years.
Two weeks after the school raid, Philippine troops shot dead Abu Sayyaf commander Wahab Upao, who allegedly led the attack on the school.
Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have been blamed for bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.
U.S.-backed offensives against the militants, arrests and surrenders have reduced the Abu Sayyaf's strength to about 300 armed men from more than 1,000 during its heyday in 2000, according to the military.
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