GENERAL SANTOS CITY (MindaNews / 23 November) – Eighty suspects in the gruesome Ampatuan Massacre have not been arrested 14 years after the carnage that killed 58 people, including 32 media workers, former Maguindanao Governor and Congressman Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu said Thursday.
The same number of suspects remain at-large four years after a lower court handed a guilty verdict to 43 respondents in the case.
Mangudadatu led the commemoration at the massacre site of the shocking Ampatuan Massacre, the worst election-related violence in the Philippines and the single deadliest attack on media workers in the world.
The gruesome manslaughter happened on November 23, 2009, exactly 14 years ago today, Thursday, at Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town in the then undivided Maguindanao province.
Since then, the Mangudadatu family and the families of the other victims would flock to the massacre site annually during its anniversary to remember their departed loved ones.
The families of the 32 media workers commemorate the massacre at the site days before the anniversary.
Mangudadatu said that among the suspects who remain scot-free is Bahnarin Ampatuan, who, according to him, is a brother-in-law of Sultan Kudarat Gov. Pax Ali Mangudadatu.
“Some of these suspects are just roaming in the vicinities of Maguindanao,” Toto Mangudadatu said during Thursday’s commemoration aired live on Facebook.
Pax Ali is the son of Maguindanao Governor Mariam Sangki-Mangudadatu, who defeated Toto Mangudadatu in the 2022 gubernatorial race. Mariam is the wife of former Sultan Kudarat Governor Suharto “Teng” Mangudadatu, Toto’s cousin.
Toto Mangudadatu’s wife, beauty queen Sharifa Akeel, ran but lost to Pax Ali in the last gubernatorial contest in Sultan Kudarat province.
A total of 197 persons were charged for the Ampatuan Massacre.
Forty-three of the accused were convicted, 28 of them principals, while 56 were acquitted in a verdict handed out in 2019, 10 years after the incident.
The court found Andal Ampatuan Jr., former mayor of Datu Unsay town, and brother Zaldy, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, guilty for 57 counts of murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison without parole.
They have appealed the decision before the Court of Appeals.
One of the principal suspects, Ampatuan family patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., former Maguindanao governor, died from sickness while in detention in 2015.
Toto Mangudadatu claimed that some “witnesses have been offered houses or millions of pesos to retract their testimonies” against the principal suspects.
He urged the families of the other victims to remain steadfast in pursuing justice, as the case remain under appeal.
“Kahit mag-isa lang ako, isisigaw at isisigaw ko ang hustista (Even if I’m alone, I will always shout for justice),” he said.
Bai Najma Hassana Biruar, chairperson of Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town, said that about 40 vehicles from Mangudadatu’s camp convoyed to the massacre site for this year’s commemoration activity.
Biruar said the 40th Infantry Battalion and the local police secured the massacre site even days before the anniversary.
In 2009, Mangudadatu, then vice mayor of Buluan town, challenged the grip on power of the Ampatuans. Mangudadatu sent a convoy composed of female members of his family to file his certificate of candidacy for governor.
The convoy, including the media workers who were covering the event, was waylaid in the town of Ampatuan and herded off to Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman where they were peppered with high-powered firearms and buried on freshly dug graves, obviously to hide the crime.
Mangudadatu’s wife Genalyn and several other female family members were among those killed.
He went on to win the gubernatorial post and served for three consecutive terms. He was the congressman of the second district of Maguindanao from 2019 to 2022. He ran but lost in the 2022 gubernatorial contest. (Bong S. Sarmiento / MindaNews)
