Gov't asked to arrest other Maguindanao massacre suspects who remained at large

MAGUINDANAO ---- Families of the 58 victims of the Nov. 23, 2009 Maguindanao massacre on Thursday urged authorities to arrest the suspects in the carnage who are still at large.
Local officials, representatives from the police, the military and relatives of the victims commemorated on Thursday the eighth anniversary of the Massacre at Sitio Salman in Barangay Masalay in Ampatuan municipality.
Among the elusive massacre suspects still unaccounted for are two grandsons of former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan, Sr. The former governor was tagged by witnesses as mastermind of the massacre, the country’s worst election-related violence ever.
Senior members of the Ampatuan clan, among them Zaldy, former regional governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and his younger sibling, Datu Andal, Jr., have been detained since December 2009 in connection with their alleged involvement in the gruesome incident.
Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, who lost a wife, Genalyn, in the incident, said he is optimistic President Rodrigo Duterte will focus attention on the need to arrest all massacre suspects who remain at large.
Mangudadatu said there are stories spreading around lately purporting that one of the two wanted grandsons of Andal, Sr. has joined a local bloc of Islamic State-inspired militants now operating in towns along central Mindanao’s vast Liguasan Delta.
Mangudadatu led Thursday’s commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre at the scene of the carnage, which shook the nation to its core.
Relatives of other massacre fatalities told reporters they want to achieve justice before the term of Duterte ends in 2022.
It’s been eight years now and we still cannot see even just a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. President Duterte is powerful, the most powerful man in the country and we know he can help, said the 87-year-old Marino Ridao, a retired university math professor.
Ridao, who also served as member of the Cotabato City council for three consecutive terms, lost a son in the massacre.

I want to see a judicial closure to this case while I am still alive, Ridao said.
Mangudadatu, now in his last term as governor of Maguindanao, said he wants justice for his wife and two sisters and all other victims of the massacre before his official tenure as provincial chief executive expires in 2019.
The 58 massacre victims, among them 38 journalists, were in a convoy proceeding to the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak town to deliver Mangudadatu’s certificate of candidacy for governor during the May 2010 elections when members of the Ampatuan clan flagged them down.
The suspects, backed by their private militia, herded them to a hilly area in Sitio Salman in Barangay Masalay where they were killed using machineguns and assault rifles.
The patriarch then of the Ampatuan family, Andal Sr., who died of liver cancer while in detention in connection with the massacre, did not want the supposed candidacy for the same post of his son, Andal, Jr., challenged by any contender.
Mangudadatu was still vice mayor of Buluan, now the capital town of Maguindanao, when he aspired then for the gubernatorial post of the province.

There are now more than 200 witnesses helping prosecute at least 190 suspects in the massacre, some of them police officers who allegedly connived with the Ampatuans.
More than a hundred suspects are now detained along with several Ampatuan clan leaders who are being prosecuted for multiple pre-meditated murders.
Chief Supt. Graciano Mijares, director of the Police Regional Office-ARMM, assured on Thursday to mobilize intelligence agents in police offices in the second district of Maguindanao to locate all suspects in the massacre who are scot-free.
Thursday’s commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre was capped off with ecumenical prayers by Muslim, Christian and Lumad religious leaders and a candle-lighting ceremony at a memorial marker in the scene of the incident.