By Bohol Island News Staff | 09:53 AM December 19, 2019
The verdict on the Maguindanao massacre case, a gruesome slaughter that killed 58 individuals, including 32 media workers will be handed down Thursday, December 19, at the Quezon City Jail Annex after a decade-long trial.
Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes will read the verdict behind closed doors at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig City.
Camp Bagong Diwa has been on lockdown since yesterday — no visitors allowed for two days for everyone detained there.
On Nov. 23, 2009, 58 persons were killed, 32 of them from the media, when armed men reportedly led by then Datu Unsay mayor Datu Andal Ampatuan, Jr., flagged down the convoy of six vehicles from the camp of then vice mayor Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, along the highway, as they were on their way to the next town, Shariff Aguak, to file the latter’s certificate of candidacy for governor. Mangudadatu challenged the powerful Ampatuan warlord clan of Maguindanao province in Mindanao.
There were 53 of them in the convoy but five other persons in two vehicles that happened to pass at the wrong time, were stopped at gunpoint shortly before noon and diverted towards Masalay, at the foothills of Daguma Range.
The government-owned yellow Komatsu backhoe, already on standby, was used to dig the mass grave even before the massacre was committed.
It was the worst election-related violence in the country’s history and the “single deadliest attack on journalists the world over.”
Aside from Andal Ampatuan, Jr., also charged were his father, the former Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan, Sr.; his brothers Zaldy, then on his second term as Governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao; Anwar, then mayor of Shariff Aguak town, and Sajid Islam, who was elected Vice Governor of Maguindanao in 2007; brother in law Akmad “Tato” Ampatuan, Sr. and his sons Saudi Jr. and Bahnarin; and first cousins Nords and Akmad.
A total of 196 persons were charged with 58 counts of murder. Around 80 of them are still at large.
Sajid was freed on bail in early 2015 after paying 11.6 million pesos, at 200,000 pesos for each count of murder. Several other policemen were granted bail but could not afford the amount.
The Ampatuan patriarch succumbed to liver cancer on July 17, 2015.
Last Dec. 3, media groups filed a petition addressed to Chief Justice Diosdado Peralta for “open, live coverage of the court ruling on the Ampatuan massacre cases.”
The Ampatuan massacre is described as “the single-day deadliest attack on the media across the world that claimed the lives of 58 persons, including 32 journalists and media workers, on Nov. 23, 2009.”
Live coverage has been allowed, but not for all media entities. Only the government-run PTV 4 will be allowed inside the judgment room and the camp, but media networks can hook up with PTV 4 and beam the proceedings live on TV, radio and the internet.
