Updated November 26, 2009 12:00 AM
MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine National Police (PNP) yesterday refused to categorically name Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., a political ally of President Arroyo, as the prime suspect in an election-linked massacre in Maguindanao in the absence of concrete evidence against the Ampatuan family.This came amid speculations that Ampatuan Jr. had already fled the country. Other sources, however, said that he is still in Maguindanao.
National police spokesman Chief Super intendent Leonardo Espina earlier said that “according to initial reports, those who were abducted and murdered at Saniag were stopped by a group led by the mayor of Datu Unsay.”
But Espina later backtracked and told reporters “to verify first the report” because the word suspect is a technical term.
“Let’s evaluate first if he will be implicated in the statements. After it is done and concluded, if he is included then his status will change. That’s the time we call him suspect,” the PNP spokesman said.
Ampatuan is a member of the ruling Lakas-Kampi-CMD coalition and a son of an extremely powerful politician in the region who has ensured local support for President Arroyo in previous elections.
The military and the relatives of the victims had previously named the bodyguards of the Ampatuans as the suspects in Monday’s massacre in which relatives and supporters of a rival politician, and a group of journalists who went with them to cover the filing of his Certificte of Candidacy, were abducted and brutally killed in a village on the outskirts of a town that bears the clan’s name.
Espina’s comments were the first time Ampatuan Jr. was specifically mentioned in connection with the gruesome massacre.
He was being groomed to succeed his father, who is on his third and last term as Maguindanao governor.
Espina said he is hopeful that charges against the perpetrators will be filed within the week.
Crucial phone calls
Investigators will also try to get a written statement from Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu pertaining to his last phone conversation with his wife Genalyn, who told her husband that a group of armed men led by an Ampatuan intercepted them.
Superintendent Arthur Llamas, of the PNP Legal Service, said the telephone conversation between the vice mayor and his wife was “very important in the investigation and possibly in the prosecution of the case now.”
“Basically, this is being considered by the PNP as part of evidence that will be used in filing charges against the culprits because basically we could consider this as the res gestae or a statement coming from a dying person, if indeed the person died after she made the statement,” said Llamas.
He said the PNP, through a court order, might request for proof of the conversation from the telephone network.
Complicity of men in uniform?
Espina also said it will question Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police director Chief Superintendent Paisal Umpa on why he did not grant the request of Buluan Mayor Mangudadatu for a security detail on the convoy.
It was earlier reported that Umpa rejected Mangudadatu’s request for police protection.
“He will be investigated for that. He has also yet to make and submit a report on the incident,” Espina said.
The PNP earlier relieved and placed under investigation Maguindanao police director Senior Superintendent Abdusana Maguid and his deputy, Chief inspector Zukarno Dicay.
Central Mindanao’s Muslim and Christian communities have also asked for a probe on Col. Medardo Jeslani, commander of the Army’s 601st Brigade, who they said ignored the presence of armed men along Barangay Salman, Ampatuan days before the incident.
The 601st Brigade has jurisdiction over Ampatuan and surrounding towns in the second district of Maguindanao, the known political bailiwicks of former Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr.
Even lowly Army intelligence operatives of battalions under the 601st Brigade said they had informed their superiors, all under Jeslani, of the presence of the suspects on Friday.
“I was told by my superiors that we can’t do anything because it’s a political thing and that we should not interfere,” an Army agent told reporters.
The suspects, according to farmers residing near Barangay Salman, even erected an Army squad tent in a spot not far from the highway where they kept their firearms, some of them M-60 machineguns.
Witnesses said the gunmen were even seen mingling with policemen from the Maguindanao provincial police while in the area.
Premeditated
The gunmen apparently could have planned to bury the victims with their vehicles using a mechanized excavator, but balked and fled after learning that six trucks full of responding soldiers started to close in.
Ethnic Maguindanaons residing in farms around the area where the victims were slaughtered said the gunmen, informed by lookouts, were alarmed by the arrival of soldiers dispatched by the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and thus abandoned the remaining corpses that they were supposed to bury using a Komatsu crane-type backhoe.
More than a dozen of those killed in the carnage were media practitioners from the South Cotabato-Sarangani-General Santos City (Soscargen) area accompanying the women of the Mangudadatu clan who were set to file the vice mayor’s candidacy for provincial governor.
No men from the family were present since they believed that rivals would not attack women.
“There are persistent intelligence reports coming in from informants around the crime scene that the real plan of the killers was to bury the victims, including their vehicles, but they escaped hastily after learning that several military trucks full of soldiers were already headed towards their location,” said Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.
Left at the crime scene were a Toyota Tamaraw FX utility vehicle and a Toyota Vios and more than a dozen cadavers riddled with bullets.
Authorities also recovered in the crime scene a wrecked UNTV vehicle believed to have been used by local journalists who would have covered the filing.
The police and the military are now checking on circulating text messages purporting that the operator of the backhoe has not returned home.
The yellow backhoe was marked property of the Maguindanao provincial government.
Shallow assurance
The provincial administrator of Maguindanao, engineer Norie Unas, told The STAR late last night that Ampatuan has assured Presidential Assistant for Mindanao Jesus Dureza during a meeting in Shariff Aguak of his willingness to submit to an investigation.
The Mangudadatus said some of their slain relatives managed to call family members in Buluan when armed men flagged them down at Barangay Salman here and relayed to them that they saw Ampatuan among the group that stopped their vehicles.
“It was really planned because they had already dug a huge hole (for the bodies),” Mangudadatu said.
He said there were reports from the area that the militia had been blocking the road for days.
The Ampatuans, who have ruled one of the nation’s poorest regions since 2001, could not be reached for comment.
Fourth Estate mourning
As of press time, Central Mindanao Regional Police director Chief Superintendent Josefino Cataluña said a total of 57 bodies had already been recovered after 11 bodies were dug up from the grave yesterday, but the victim’s identities had not yet been established.
However, 17 of them were believed to be journalists from regional newspapers, TV and radio stations, making Monday’s attack the most deadly ever on the media.
Five people remain unaccounted for.
“The perpetrators will not escape justice. The law will hunt them until they are caught,” President Arroyo told reporters.
“No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law,” Arroyo said.
However, few think she will be successful in the impoverished, lawless region that has been outside the central government’s reach for generations, and where warlords backed by private armies go by their own rules.
Julkipli Wadi, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of the Philippines, said he doubted the national government’s resolve in trimming the powers of political dynasties like the Ampatuans because they deliver votes during elections.
“Because of the absence of viable political institutions, powerful men are taking over,” he said. “Big political forces and personalities in the national government are sustaining the warlords, especially during election time, because they rely on big families for their votes.”
Noynoy Espina, vice chairman of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, said as many as 20 journalists may have been in the convoy, based on reports from union chapters in the area.
The figures could not be immediately reconciled, but still the deaths marked “the largest single massacre of journalists ever,” according to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
DOJ eyes prosecution
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera flew to Mindanao to personally supervise the investigation of Department of Justice (DOJ) fiscals and agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) aimed at pinpointing the perpetrators in the massacre.
Devanadera told reporters in a teleconference that their team was in Koronadal City for the autopsy of victims. She said they were in a funeral parlor where 18 of the recovered bodies were being examined by the NBI medico-legal team.
She said it has been determined that the victims were shot point-blank with high-powered firearms.
“Gunpowder was found all over the bodies, which means they were shot at very close range,” she lamented.
She, however, stressed that there were no indications that the female victims were raped, neither were any of the victims beheaded.
Devanadera said they were set to see the reported four witnesses and evaluate testimonies.
“Our investigation is on full blast,” she said.
The DOJ chief also revealed that they are considering placing the witnesses under the Witness Protection Program and bringing them to Manila for security reasons.
She asked for “more time to make concrete findings,” reiterating that the DOJ would “act with dispatch and resolve immediately cases that may be referred for inquest/ preliminary investigation.”
Devanadera said she has also tapped state prosecutors in North Cotabato to assist families of victims in claiming benefits under the Victims Compensation Law through the department’s Board of Claims.
She ordered the fiscals to coordinate closely with the NBI and military and police in building up the case against perpetrators of the massacre.
“We will ensure the expeditious prosecution of all those who are responsible for this atrocity. The DOJ shall work on these cases until we have prosecuted the perpetrators to its successful conclusion,” she stressed.
Devanadera has assigned Undersecretary Ricardo Blancaflor, head of Task Force 211 on media killings, to personally supervise the investigation of the DOJ-NBI team in Maguindanao.
Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan, on the other hand, said they are waiting for the DOJ to issue an order against those who are being implicated in the crime.
“Nobody has been asked to be included in the watchlist. We are still waiting for the guidance from DOJ,” Libanan said.
Senators were one in condemning the massacre and said the full force of the law should be implemented against the perpetrators.
Senators Manuel Villar Jr., Loren Legarda, Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Manuel Roxas, Benigno Aquino III, Rodolfo Biazon and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile crossed party lines and called on the government to take a bold and decisive action against the suspects.
“President GMA and Gov. Ampatuan are very close to each other. We cannot allow such a dastardly act to go unpunished. It’s about time that the rule of law be upheld to set an example that even in the Moro areas of Mindanao crime does not pay,” Pimentel said. -- With John Unson, Mike Frialde, Evelyn Macairan, Edu Punay, Sandy Araneta, Christina Mendez, AP
Source: http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=526824&publicationSubCategoryId=63
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