Golez: Treat Ampatuan as ordinary suspect

Golez: Treat Ampatuan as ordinary suspect
By: Raul S. Beltran, People's Tonight

PARANAQUE Rep. Roilo Golez yesterday asked the Philippine National Police (PNP) to consider Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. as an ordinary suspect in the massacre in Ampatuan town on Monday when at least 57 people, including women and journalists were killed, some of them allegedly beheaded. Golez, former national security adviser of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, made the call following his apprehensions that the mayor, a member of the powerful Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao, will be given special treatment after he voluntarily surrendered to authorities after he was implicated in the incident. The mayor, a son of Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr. and a brother of Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), is a principal suspect in the massacre, in which some of the victims were members of the Mangudadatu clan, a bitter political foe of the Ampatuans who have ruled Maguindanao for years. The Ampatuans are known allies of Malacañang, credited for giving President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo a big margin of votes over the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., her closest rival, in the 2004 presidential election. Latest reports said that “officially,” at least 21 journalists, some of them women, were among those killed, along with the wife and two sisters of Buluan, Maguindanao Vice Mayor Ismael “Toto” Mangudadatu, who were to file for him his certificate of candidacy for governor against Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr. in the 2010 elections. Earlier news accounts said at least 13 journalists were killed in the incident which other reports from ARMM said actually happened in Mansalaty village in the town of Datu Abndullah Sangki. Meanwhile, Sultan Kudarat Rep. Datu Pax Mangudadatu, a close relative of some of the victims, has asked the Department of Justice to immediately issue hold departure orders for all the suspects in the incident. Mangudadatu, chairman of the House committee on Mindanao affairs, said the order is necessary because of the “political and economic clout” of the suspects who can “easily evade justice by fleeing the country.” Mangudadatu also urged the suspects to “face the problem squarely before the bar of justice.”