Guilty: Court convicts Ampatuan brothers over decade-old Maguindanao massacre

Maguindanao political dynasty members Datu “Unsay” Andal Jr. and Zaldy Ampatuan, along with several others, were convicted of 57 counts of murder today as a judge rendered the historic and long-awaited verdict in a trial over what has been called the worst case of election-related violence in Philippine history.

Read: Court orders Zaldy Ampatuan’s return to jail from hospital as verdict for Maguindanao massacre nears

Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes sentenced the Ampatuan brothers to life, or up to 40 years, in prison without possibility of parole for the killing of 58 people, 32 of whom were journalists, on Nov. 23, 2009, Rappler reports. (The defendants were only found guilty on 57 counts because one of the bodies was never recovered.)

In a 761-page ruling, the court handed down guilty verdicts to 100 of the 197 suspects accused in the case. Three Ampatuans were also acquitted, the cases against six other defendants were dropped, two of the accused were discharged as state’s witnesses, and the remainder are either at large, or have died over the course of the intervening years. (Scroll to the end to see a full list of the judgments.)

Before the court’s verdict was rendered, Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu, Maguindanao’s former governor, who lost his wife and sisters in the mass killing, told reporters outside Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig this morning that he was praying for a “100 percent guilty verdict.”

The Ampatuans are political rivals of the Mangudadatus. At the time of the massacre, Esmael, then a gubernatorial hopeful for Maguindanao, was set to run in the 2010 elections against Mayor Datu “Unsay” Andal Ampatuan, the son of then-Governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. On the way to file for Esmael’s candidacy, a convoy of seven vehicles carrying his wife, sisters, lawyers, supporters and a host of journalists was reportedly stopped at a checkpoint in Sitio Malating, Ampatuan town, by around 100 armed men.

The men were allegedly part of a private army sent by the Amapatuan clan to dispose of their enemies. The victims were taken away and killed in broad daylight, and their bodies dumped in roadside pits. Authorities later found the mass graves and had to use a backhoe to recover the dead.

A domestic worker and two politicians — both of whom were initially among the co-defendants — were among those who testified to seeing the brothers attend meetings where they planned the mass killing. The massacre was alleged to have been conducted with the approval of the clan’s patriarch and co-accused, Andal Sr., who died of a heart attack in 2015. Datu “Unsay” Andal Jr., was pinpointed as one of the gunmen, Rappler reports.

“I want them hanged,” Mangudadatu told reporters before the verdict, “especially Unsay and his brothers; it was atrocious what they did,” he said in Filipino.

Noemi Parcon, whose husband, Joel, was one of the journalists killed in the massacre, told reporters, “It will be a slap in the face of the justice system in the Philippines if we don’t win this case.”

A few days before the closely watched trial, a Quezon City court had ordered Zaldy to be returned to his jail cell in Camp Bagong Diwa after nearly two months of confinement in a private hospital in Makati City following a stroke in October. Judge Reyes ruled that Ampatuan was fit to undergo rehabilitation in prison after state prosecutors last month appealed to have him returned to his cell, fearing that he would escape.

Read: Supreme Court allows postponement of Ampatuan massacre verdict to December

Malacañang Spokesman Salvador Panelo in a press conference earlier this week, said that the matter was in the hands of the justice system, but “we hope that justice will be given to the parties, especially to the prosecution.”

This morning on ANC’s “Early Edition,” University of the Philippines journalism professor Danilo Arao emphasized the significance of the trial.

“Today’s important because particularly the members of the Ampatuan clan, they are said to be the masterminds of the killings so if they get convicted, I’m hoping they will, then that would be historic in so far as statistics on culture of impunity would be concerned,” he said.

“The whole world is watching because this is something that interests people outside the Philippines given that we are supposed to be freest press in Asia but we’re one of the most dangerous places to practice journalism, and the Ampatuan massacre is such a glaring manifestation of that.”

Read: Philippines most dangerous country for journalists in Asia: Reporters Without Borders

“The challenge for media is to continue the coverage, [the] interest in this case, because the tendency of many courts would be to move faster if they know the media are watching,” he said.

Verdicts: