QC court junks Ampatuan’s plea for bail

A Quezon City court handling the Maguindanao massacre case upheld its earlier decision to reject bail for Andal Ampatuan Jr., one of the alleged masterminds in the 2009 mass murder of 58 people, including 32 journalists, in a town named after the Ampatuans.

In a five-page resolution, Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 reaffirmed her May 30 order rejecting the bail petition of Ampatuan and citing strong evidence.

The order, issued on Oct. 10, denied the motion for reconsideration filed by Ampatuan’s camp in June, which claimed that the basis to junk Ampatuan’s bail petition was purely testimonial and without corroboration.

Judge Reyes, however, said the court did not find any “compelling reason” to change its ruling on the bail petition because prosecutors had yet to submit ballistic reports and DNA analysis to support the case against Ampatuan.

A total of 197 suspects were charged with 58 counts of murder for the November 2009 massacre.