ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Andal Ampatuan Jr. - photo used in the DOJ investigation PHOTO BY RAISSA ROBLES
Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra exonerated Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan of the Ampatuan, Maguinandao massacre because he said Governor Zaldy was not there at the scene of the crime.
Governor Zaldy had a plane ticket and cellphone records to prove this, he said.
Please read below portions of Kenny Dalandag’s affidavit that formed part of the basis for the arrest of Gov. Zaldy. I did not get this from the lawyers of the slain journalists’ families. In fact lawyer Harry Roque declined to give it to me. I got it from deep within the government bureaucracy.
This morning, Justice Secretary Agra defended his move on radio saying:
Para imaintain yung impartiality ng pagreview ng mga dokumento at records, hindi ho naman kinokonsulta yung nagpahayag ng mga dokumento.
Kayat bagamat nagkaroon ako ng ilang discussion tungkol dito sa update tungkol sa Maguindanao massacre, ang naging basehan ko lang po ng aking resolution ay yung mga dokumento at mga ebidensiya na nasa Department t of Justice. Wala na pong iba.
This is the rough translation of what Agra said:
In order to maintain the the impartiality of the review of the documents and records, one does not consult those who gave the documents.
And so, while I had some discussion about the update on the Maguindanao massacre, the basis of my resolution were the documents and the evidence at the Department of Justice. Nothing else.
From his statements, it was clear he did not make an effort to talk to Kenny Dalandag. But last weekend Agence France Presse quoted Agra as saying:
“There was no proof of conspiracy and there was proof of an alibi.”
How did he come to that conclusion without talking to Kenny Dalandag?
Did he even consider Kenny Dalandag’s affidavit (read portions below)? Because if he didn’t he may be laying the predicate to exonerate more Ampatuans.
Nearly eight years ago I asked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, “I’m sure a lot of women are dying to ask you this question.”
“And since you are not a widow, they would like to ask you this question. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but a lot of women are dying to know – do you still have sex?”
The 55-year-old mother of three replied “Plenty” – and gave a toothy smile.
Last January 22, when she hosted a a surprise dinner for 23 officers and members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) I asked her a milder personal question about her hair. Now I’m not so sure if her reluctant reply pertained to my question eight years ago or two Fridays ago.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and FOCAP
During the hour-long dinner, Mrs Arroyo was at her gracious best but she was not all that candid. I must say, it took all of our reportorial skills to get her to talk about her former college student and now leading presidential contender Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. She refused to talk about her party’s presidential standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro or about her feelings towards the Ampatuans – her long-time allies now accused of murdering 57 people including 30 journalists.
The ease with which she talked to reporters vanished in 2005 when wiretapped tapes of her, suggesting she was trying to rig her 2004 poll victory by a million votes, leaked out.
During her dinner some of that ease returned as she talked about the presidential palace, her girlhood and her Palace chef. Only to vanish when she refused to answer many questions she deemed “political” or which asked about her “feelings”.
Still, the occasion gave me a momentary glimpse of the power and the pomp of the presidency, its lonely isolation, and the woman who was determined to hold on to it for as long as she could.
I did not get any hint she was ready to clear out her desk by June 30 when her term ends.
At short notice. An invitation to dine with her, even at several hours’ notice, was highly unusual and one I seized at a moment’s notice. She had not seen FOCAP since 2007. A press conference in 2008 was abruptly canceled after we were told she would only talk about the economy and would not entertain political questions.
I was curious why the President wanted to meet us on the same day she waved goodbye to the remains of her press secretary, Cerge Remonde.
Her terms for engaging the foreign press quickly became evident. At the entrance to the presidential palace, the guards impounded all tape recorders and cameras on orders of the palace media relations office. It was a first for many of the journalists, including me, who have covered Palace events in three previous presidencies.
The media handlers later explained that no tape recorders and cameras were allowed because it was a strictly social event. A Palace photographer would snap photos. The confiscation disoriented me somewhat because we were informed earlier that while there was no formal Q and A, the President “may answer questions”.
Didn’t she want to be quoted correctly? And it would have been bad manners for us to scribble throughout the meal.
It turned out alright in the end, because someone else, who asked to remain unnamed, enabled me to put together almost the entire dinner conversation. Besides, Mrs Arroyo never told us it was off the record.
Before Martial Law was imposed in Maguindanao, the Ampatuans were known worldwide as the prime suspects in the deliberate liquidation of 57 people, 30 of them journalists. This has set a world record for the worst one-day killing of media men in peace time, while covering a democratic exercise.
To understand how stupefied many of us at the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) were at the sudden declaration of Martial Law to catch the Ampatuans, let me give this background.
For many FOCAP members, Filipino rebels are just a phone call away. It is at times easier for us to reach by mobile phone a communist or Muslim rebel leader than a high government official.
And for those covering rebels since 1987, the Ampatuans have never been in our radar. In fact, top officials of the Moro National Liberation Front used to tell me that they felt very aggrieved that the Muslim autonomy they had won with the blood of their warriors was handed on a silver platter by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a member of the Ampatuan clan which had continuously opposed them during the Marcos dictatorship.
If the Ampatuans are indeed rebels, they seemed to be a different species altogether.By being suspected of killing journalists en masse just before launching their rebellion, they have ensured that the media will boycott and even be hostile towards them. What strange rebels indeed.
Our years of covering and writing about the Muslim and communist insurgencies have taught us that rebels don’t as a rule liquidate journalists because it is not in their creed and not to their advantage. Even the Abu Sayyaf, branded terrorist by the United States and the European Union, has merely held hostage and robbed members of FOCAP and other media men who came to cover them. It has yet to behead a reporter deliberately, knock on wood.
Many FOCAP members who regularly take the red-eye flight to central Mindanao to cover the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) know the reputation of the Ampatuans. They are the king of the hill, the warlords, the overlords, the one whose 15-car speeding convoy you avoid on the highway if you don’t want your car to end up like a pretzel.
Foreign and local journalists take their life in their hands whenever they cover in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Do you know that Manila’s insurance firms have attached a permanent rider to life and accident insurance products that says – death due to non-natural causes is not covered if this occurs in the ARMM area?
It is perhaps in this context that one can better appreciate the emotional outburst during the December 7, 2009 briefing of veteran FOCAP member Tress Martelino-Reyes, correspondent for the Japanese news agency Nikkei. Tress is not a parachute journalist. She once reported for the broadsheet Manila Chronicle.
To understand why she mentioned the phrase “sitting on their ass,” listen to this exchange between her and Secretary Puno:
Some people have taken strong exception to the fact that FOCAP has issued a very strong political statement against the imposition of Martial Law in Maguindanao. Members of FOCAP are not elected by the people, one critic said.
True. But the press is a strange sort of animal in the Philippines, specifically protected by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which states: “No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press…”
I believe the press is protected only because it is an external mechanism intended to check state abuse. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been trying mightily to revise this particular constitutional provision in order to defang the press and make it into the lapdog that it was during Marcos’ Martial Law.
The Ampatuan massacre has been condemned worldwide. Even in Manila, we feel its chilling effect. As political analyst Manolo Quezon indicated, it has ripped away a talisman that the press thought it had – a thin piece of paper wedged between two pieces of laminated plastic called “the press card”.
If those who killed 30 journalists in one day can get away with it, this signals to others how easy it would be to kill one or two or three.
We were all understandably very eager to know as much as we could how the Ampatuans suddenly became rebels. By the way, this should really qualify the Philippines in the Guinness Book of World Records as the country with the most number of simultaneous rebellions.
We were glad the presidential palace took the trouble to brief us. FOCAP Executive Director Gabby Tabuñar, former Manila correspondent for CBS News, ably steered the question and answer portion. Present in the briefing were the following:
Presidential spokesman and Press Secretary Cerge Remonde
Interior and Local overnments Secretary Ronaldo Puno
Acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devandera
Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for operations Major General Gaudencio S. Pangilinan
Philippine National Police Director General Jesus Versoza
Philippine National Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina
Philippine National Police Director for Operations Andres Caro II
To listen to Puno answer questions about this posed by Focap member Charmaine Deogracias of NHK, please click on this.
Police Director General Jesus Versoza (second on the right in the video) and Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Leonardo Espina also dazzled us with an enumeration of the wide array of high-powered weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition they had seized from the Ampatuans’ huge warehouses and palatial homes.
When the government imposed a state of emergency followed by Martial Law in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, the reason it gave was that it feared an outbreak of violence between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans.
Authorities had described both clans as “well-armed”. Seeing how well-armed the Ampatuans were, Karl Wilson of Agence France Presse naturally wanted to know if the Mangudadatus had been disarmed as well by the government.
Judge by Puno’s answer whether this has happened.
FOCAP member Dana Batnag of Jiji Press also wanted to know whether the acts of the Ampatuans met the legal definition of rebellion. Dana is a part-time law student at the University of the Philippines College of Law and was once a reporter for The Manila Chronicle.
The Revised Penal Code defines rebellion as “rising publicly and taking arms against the Government for the purpose of removing allegiance from said Government the territory of the Repulic of the Philipines or any part thereof…or depriving the Chief Executive or the Legislature, wholly or partially, of any of their powers or prerogatives.”
Based on our personal experience as reporters, rebellion is being committed by Muslim separatists trying to secede; by communist rebels trying to violently overthrow government; and by soldier rebels trying to unseat the Philippine president.
So what did the Ampatuans try to do to merit such a label, Dana wanted to know. Click on video below to listen to the government’s explanation.
I followed up Dana’s query by asking whether it was possible no rebellion took place because the tax-paid militia men were only ever loyal to the Ampatuans and never to the Philippine Republic. Armed Forces deputy chief of staff for operations Major General Gaudencio S. Pangilinan, seated off camera beside Gabby, gave the answer:
I also asked if authorities had all the while been looking “the other way” while the Ampatuans amassed all those arms and ammo:
FOCAP members were also intrigued to find out who was the leader of the firefights between government forces and Ampatuan loyalists.
Jim Gomez of Associated Press asked the security officials to elaborate on the charges filed against the Ampatuans.
Jim also wanted to know what method the authorities were using to round up the rest of the suspects.
After the briefing, I tried to ransack my mind, trying to compare the Ampatuan rebels with all the other rebels I had encountered. They did not fit any of the current moulds.
Rebels usually secrete documents laying out their ideology and plans. I remember that when the Magdalo group first burst into the picture, the president’s national security adviser Victor Corpuz briefed FOCAP extensively on the Magdalo’s ideology, using computer diskettes they found.
All that ransacking the government did inside the various Ampatuan mansions failed to turn up a single piece of paper outlining the Ampatuan rebel ideology. I sure would like to hear the Ampatuan ideology, or does this consist only of using a chainsaw and a backhoe?
If the Ampatuans had turned rebels on November 26, why did Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao Governor Zaldy Ampatuan hold a press conference three days later to appeal to media and the presidential palace to treat him fairly? That would have been the perfect time to launch their rebellion.
Personally, I believe the Arroyo government imposed Martial Law and suspended the writ of habeas corpus so it could arrest the Ampatuans and brand them rebels.
Justice secretary Agnes Devanadera herself stated as much before FOCAP when asked by Manny Mogato of Reuters for an update on the massacre:
Without Martial Law, the Ampatuans are just suspected monsters and mass murderers.
Manny also asked if the government might investigate the Ampatuans if they diverted any funds coming from the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and Japan’s JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) to buying their illegal armory. Here’s Puno’s reply -
Days later, Malacañang Palace backtracked on the matter. See GMAnews story.
What really bothers me is what Arroyo’s deputy spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo said:
“If we will see later on that the Ampatuans are found guilty based on the investigation, then whether ally or not they will not be given special treatment and they should be punished… but it doesn’t mean that we are no longer friends with them if they are guilty. I think that should be treated separately” (My underscoring.)
It’s okay for the president to continue being friends with the Ampatuans even if they prove to be monsters?
Citing the wrong law as the legal basis shows that this martial law is so sloppily put together. I fear the suspected murderers can get away with murder by exploiting precisely this sloppiness.
In this instance, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed Proclamation 1959 using the following as her basis for declaring Martial Law:
the Constitution and
Republic Act 6986.
But RA 6986 happens to be “An Act establishing a high school in Barangay Dulop, municipality of Dumingag, province of Zamboanga del Sur, to be known as the Dulop High School, and appropriating funds therefore.” See for yourself. Go to chanrobles.com and scroll down to view RA6986
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita shows a copy of Proclamation No. 1959 signed on December 4, 2009 by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, proclaiming a state of martial law and suspending the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in the province of Maguindanao, except for certain areas after a press briefing Saturday (December 5) in Malacanang. (Official photo release by the Office of the Press Secretary, photo by Marcelino Pascua)
Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera must have caught on to this mistake because in the press conference today at noon in Malacanang Palace, she started by pointing out a “clerical error” in Proclamation 1959. She didn’t apologize or explain the mistake, though. To watch the presscon, go to Dec 5, 2009
She said: “Let me first announce a correction in our Proclamation No. 1959. There is a clerical error on the third ‘Whereas’ clause –instead of RA No. 6989, it should be Act no. 3815 as amended which is the Revised Penal Code.”
What happens now to Zaldy and Andal Ampatuan Sr who were arrested on the basis of this proclamation? Could their wily lawyer Sigfrid Fortun exploit this mistake to point out that their arrests were baseless?
Let’s assume good faith. Perhaps the drafters of the proclamation were sleepy and made a mistake and inverted the numbers?
Sure enough, they did. R.A. 6968 is – “An Act punishing the crime of coup d’etat by amending Articles 134, 135 and 136 of…The Revised Penal Code, and for other purposes.”
This is the same provision in the Revised Penal Code that Devanadera said the Proclamation referred to.
It states how rebellion or insurrection is committed:
“The crime of rebellion or insurrection is committed by rising and taking arms against the Government for the purpose of removing from the allegiance to said Government or its laws, the territory of the Republic of the Philippines or any part thereof, of any body of land, naval or other armed forces, or depriving the Chief Executive or the Legislature, wholly or partially, of any of their powers or prerogatives.”
Let’s break down this long sentence,
“The crime of rebellion or insurrection is committed by rising and taking arms against the Government…
I’m puzzled by this. It’s now sunset and no armed men – that the military said were massing - have been were arrested in connection with the rebellion.
During the press con, Devanadera justified martial law by saying: “It was a looming and in fact it was already practically an overthrow of government. The courts were not functioning in Maguindanao.”
But she had started her explanation by saying: “There were arrests and there were witnesses that came up and the appropriate charges were filed for multiple murder. ” Didn’t that show a functioning court?
To further justify martial law, she said, “practically the local governments in the whole of Mindanao had been removed from the legitimate government authorities. In fact most of these local government units, even the municipal buildings especially, have closed down. They cease to render government services and there was massing in various parts of heavily armed men.”
Perhaps there is another reason why town halls shut down? Last week, President Arroyo gave Interior and Local Governments Secretary Ronaldo Puno wide supervisory powers over the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) which includes Maguindanao. Presidential spokesman Cerge Remonde said Puno had the power to suspend all officials of Maguindanao province and relieve all police and military commanders in the area.
Did he or did he not suspend local executives? And didn’t he also have the power to replace them for dereliction of duty?
Today Remonde practically said media should be grateful for martial law. He said “this step is taken by Her Excellency President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in answer to that cry for justice of the victims of the Maguindanao massacre.”
Unfortunately, the Ampatuans will not be tried by a military court but by a civilian court that could throw out vital evidence just because this was taken in an unconstitutional manner.
I fear this martial law is a set-up. An overkill that will harm the case of the Filipino people against the Ampatuans.
“We need a backhoe to empty out the previously excavated mass graves to sift through the debris to ascertain whether an untouched part of the grave may still hold some human remains,” according to Peruvian forensic anthropologist Dr. Jose Pablo Baraybar who is helping gather forensic evidence to use in the coming court trial.
They are still looking for a possible 58th victim.
I am reprinting below the latest press release issued by Atty. Romel Regalado Bagares, executive director of the lawyers’ NGO, the Center for International Law, which is also helping out.
PRESS RELEASE 12/3/09
Cotabato City – The independent forensic team led by Peruvian forensic anthropologist Dr. Jose Pablo Baraybar said yesterday it is “now almost sure that there is a 58th body” that is yet unaccounted for after his team’s discovery of a partial upper left denture with a metal clasp at the crime scene that did not fit any of the remains already recovered.
As this developed, Baraybar and his team were set to fly back to Manila yesterday on the advice of their private security consultants who reported that the group was being cased by armed men.
Dr. Baraybar said the dentures belonged to slain Midland Review staff Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay, of Tacurong City Sultan Kudarat, according to his dental records.
“However, the dentures did not fit the set of human remains earlier identified as belonging to Momay,” said the forensic anthropologist, adding that the same body is being claimed as well by the families of Victor Nuñez and a certain Tiamzon, both of UNTV based in General Santos City.
The discovery of the dentures brings to 58 the number of people who perished in the Nov. 23 carnage. Ealier, authorities reported that a total of 57 human remains have been recovered from the site and of these, only three have remained unidentified.
However, Dr. Baraybar’s team found that of the three remains, two have a full set of teeth while the third has full upper and lower dentures. “This clearly means we have another body still missing.”
Baraybar’s team began evidence-gathering at the massacre site in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town Sunday. The dentures were recovered Wednesday in a grassy area near one of the vehicles – a Songgyang van – in the convoy that was waylaid by some 100 armed men linked to the powerful Ampatuan clan.
The Peruvian forensic expert said Momay’s dentures are held in place by a metal clasp and could not be easily dislodged unless extracted by an indirect force. “That is the best guess we can have at this moment.”
Dr. Baraybar and his British counterpart Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert and experienced field investigator, lead a team of forensic investigators and lawyers from the Center for International Law (CenterLaw) deputized by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) to conduct an independent parallel investigation on the Ampatuan massacre. He also directed the Office on Missing Persons and Forensics of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo.
Baraybar and Cobb-Smith are joined in the team by Centerlaw lawyers Harry Roque, Joel Butuyan, Romel Bagares and Gilbert Andres.
The group’s recovery efforts had been hampered by the lack of heavy equipment. “We need a backhoe to empty out the previously excavated mass graves to sift through the debris to ascertain whether an untouched part of the grave may still hold some human remains,” said Dr. Baraybar. “It has to be carefully done – we have some experience doing this in the Balkans in our work for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.”
The legal team’s chief counsel, Harry Roque, said he was able to arrange for a backhoe and a truck for the use of the forensic investigation to be fielded to the crime scene by Saturday morning.
“We’re moving our base of operations from Cotabato City to Koronadal City, where the security risks are not as high,” said Roque.
I believe the true test of a democratic nation is the ability of its people to sack their leaders ritually through fraud-free elections. And to criticize and hold them accountable without fear of being buried by a backhoe.
April 19, 2010 | Posted by raissa robles 
Categories: Ampatuan massacre, Journalism, Mindanao | 
Tags: Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra, Ampatuan massacre | 
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