Ampatuan clan will not escape investigations

President Gloria Arroyo placed parts of southern Philippines under a state of emergency on Tuesday, a day after dozens of people, including 13 journalists, were seized, killed and beheaded in Maguindanao province.

The death toll from the attack rose to 46 as of Tuesday, police said.

“We have recovered a total of 46 bodies,” Chief Supt. Leodardo Espina, also the Philippine National Police spokesman, told reporters in Manila.

He said that 24 bodies had been found, on top of the 22 recovered shortly after Monday’s massacre.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde, during a press conference, said that the emergency proclamation covers Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat province and Cotabato City.

President Arroyo issued the order on recommendation made by the security cluster of the entire Cabinet to prevent violence from escalating in southwestern Mindanao, Remonde explained.

“The Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police are hereby ordered to undertake such measures as may be allowed by the Constitution and by law to prevent and suppress all incidents of lawless violence in the aforesaid areas. The state of emergency shall remain enforced and [in] effect until lifted or withdrawn by the President,” according to the proclamation.

No untouchables

Remonde said that there would be “no untouchables” during the course of the investigation of the carnage that the President also ordered conducted. Both political clans linked to the unprecedented mass murder of civilians—the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus—are allied with the Arroyo administration.

Promising swift justice to the victims, the government, under the emergency declaration, will disarm private armies and could cancel the writ of habeas corpus.

The President also ordered acting Defense Sec. Norberto Gonzales and Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, acting military chief of staff, “to personally oversee military action against the perpetrators of these dastardly acts that occurred yesterday.”

President Arroyo said, “No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims.”

Malacañang has instructed the military, the police, the Commission on Human Rights and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to jointly investigate the incident.

Wheels of justice

Pitching in, acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera tapped all the resources of the Justice department to help in the early solution of the massacre.

Devanadera also ordered the NBI to conduct its own parallel inquiry to help the police and other law enforcers in the identification of the masterminds behind the killings.

She formed a team of prosecutors to assist the bureau and the Task Force Against Media Killings (TF 211) in the investigation and file the corresponding charges in court as needed.

In a memorandum, Devanadera named eight prosecutors who will handle all the cases arising from the massacre.

They are Senior State Prosecutor Philip Kimpo as panel chairman; and Bernardo Parico, Rassendell Rene Gingoyon, Bunrofil Altares, Aldrin Evangelista, Lamberto Fabros, Rami Giuling of Maguindanao and Akilala Balt of Shariff Kabunsuan, (Maguindanao) as members.

Devanadera said that she also tapped state prosecutors in North Cotabato to assist families of the victims in claiming benefits under the Victims Compensation Law through the department’s Board of Claims.

And she ordered all prosecutors in Maguindanao and Cotabato provinces to work closely with the National Bureau of Investigation and other authorities to speed up the gathering of evidence and the prosecution of the perpetrators of the massacre.

“We will ensure the expeditious prosecution of all those who are responsible for this atrocity. The DOJ [Department of Justice] shall work on these cases until we have prosecuted the perpetrators to its successful conclusion,” Devanadera said.

Forces mobilized

President Arroyo also announced the establishment of checkpoints and chokepoints, with elements of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade already in place to preserve peace and secure the area.
She appointed the presidential adviser for Mindanao affairs, Jesus Dureza, as the head of the crisis committee for Maguindanao.

Hundreds of government soldiers were sent also on Tuesday to hunt down the suspects in the massacre.
Officials said that troops were scouring mountainous areas in Maguindanao where the more than 100 armed suspects were believed hiding.

“We have more than 400 soldiers hunting down the perpetrators of this crime. We have troops deployed in the towns of Maguindanao to prevent retaliation and more bloodshed,” said Army Col. Jonathan Ponce, a spokesman for the Sixth Infantry Division.

Conflicting reports said that as many as 43 people, including journalists and two human-rights lawyers, were killed. At least 17 journalists were killed in the attack, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The military said at least 30 were shot and beheaded and their bodies recovered late Monday by soldiers in the town of Ampatuan.

Ponce said that the soldiers recovered the victims’ five vehicles and were still searching for more bodies in at least two areas in a remote village in Ampatuan.

No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but four people who survived the carnage pointed to the powerful Ampatuan clan as behind the murder, but this could not be immediately confirmed.

The bodies of 22 kidnap victims, out of the 44 reported abducted, including the wife and relatives of Buluan town’s Vice Mayor Ismael Mangudadatu, a gubernatorial aspirant in Maguindanao, were recovered by the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade Monday afternoon.
The bodies, recovered in Masalay sitio, Salman village in Ampatuan, reportedly showed “signs of mutilation.”

Reports said that Mangudadatu’s wife, Genalyn, his sister, some relatives and members of the media were on their way to file the gubernatorial aspirant’s certificate of candidacy when a group of about armed men abducted them.

Mayor Ampatuan’s men

The gunmen allegedly were led by Mayor Datu Andal Ampatuan Jr. of Datu Unsay town, a son of Gov. Andal Ampatuan of Maguindanao and brother of Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Also linked to the massacre were a top policeman of Maguindanao and three of his deputies, all four of whom were arrested and detained also on Tuesday.

Witnesses said that Chief Supt. Sukarno Dicay, the deputy police chief, was present when the gunmen shot dead the journalists and associates of the Mangudadatu family.

“He [Dicay] was seen at the scene of the crime together with some Cafgus,” said Chief Supt. Leonardo Espina, also the chief spokesman for the Philippine National Police.

Cafgu refers to the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit militia, which is trained and armed by the government to fight local insurgencies.

Two other police officers seen with Dicay at the crime scene had also been sacked and detained “because of command responsibility,” according to Espina. He identified one of the officers as Director Abusana Maguid, Dicay’s boss and provincial police chief.

Espina said that the witnesses told investigators that Dicay and his two subordinates were seen with the armed men linked to Maguindanao Gov. Ampatuan when they allegedly carried out the killings on Monday.

Bodies recovered

Police have recovered 22 bodies from a group of more than 46 journalists and politicians who were abducted by the armed men. Many of the others remained missing and authorities have warned that the death toll will climb.

The military said that members of the Ampatuan clan, which has a political lock on areas of Maguindanao, were the prime suspects.

“The suspects are bodyguards of Ampatuan, local police aides and certain lawless elements,” military spokesman and Col. Romeo Brawner said, apparently referring to the Maguindanao governor.
GMA 7 television reported that four who survived the murders allegedly tagged the governors of Maguindanao and ARMM in the killings. The four are now in the custody of the Mangudadatus, political rivals of the Ampatuans.

The Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in Mindanao condemned the brutal killings and identified the slain lawyers as Concepcion Brizuela and Cynthia Oquendo, both members of the group.

“This barbaric mass murder not only indicates the early onset of preelection violence, but, also shows that the culture of impunity clearly pervades with the existence of warlord-maintained private armies that have long been tolerated by the government, past and present. Considering their proximity to the present occupants of Malacañang, these warlords, as well as their henchmen, certainly believe that they can get away with cold-blooded mass murder.”

“It is doubly condemnable that among the latest victims were journalists and lawyers, who have been in the line of fire because of their commitment to their respective profession. Sadly, the names of Attorney Brizuela and Attorney Oquendo will be added to the long list of victims of extrajudicial killings under the [Arroyo] administration,” the group said also on Tuesday.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines chapter in Zamboanga City, also in Mindanao, branded the killings of the journalists as barbaric and condemned the murderers.

“Words fail to convey the enormous condemnation we heap upon this barbaric deed and its barbarous perpetrators, whose descent into moral monstrosity has no parallel in Mindanao’s troubled history,” it said in a statement also on Tuesday.

“We ask the government to swiftly arrest and punish the perpetrators of this mass murder. Although the Ampatuan clan said to be behind this mass murder are known to be her political henchmen and running dogs in Central Mindanao, President Gloria Arroyo should not and must not a la Pontius Pilate let this one more heinous atrocity pass into history without the deserved punishment to the killers and redress to their victims as well as to their injured, scandalized communities. Without such a categorical closure, we in Mindanao will continue to bleed and suffer from this systemic culture of violence and death. With hope, we say, God forbid,” the group added.

ANGELO S. SAMONTE, AL JACINTO, WILLIAM B. DEPASUPIL, SAMMY MARTIN, JEFFERSON ANTIPORDA AND AFP