Grave yields bones tied to ‘chainsaw massacres’

COTABATO CITY—Government agents on Friday discovered sets of skeletal remains of suspected victims of summary executions in Maguindanao supposedly perpetrated by the Ampatuan clan. The remains were believed to be those of people killed with the use of chainsaws.

Col. Leopoldo Galon, spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command, said the skeletal remains of a still undetermined number of persons were dug up from a shallow grave beside a dirt road leading to Datu Hofer, Maguindanao, around 10 a.m. on Friday.

Galon said the remains were found after authorities launched a search that started Thursday and was prompted by the confession of a witness who claimed he knew where victims of the so-called chainsaw massacres in Maguindanao were buried and who were behind the crimes.

The witness had been described as someone close to former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., who is now detained pending trial for the mass murder of 58 people on Nov. 23, 2009, in a case now known as the worst case of political violence in the country.

Officials of the Department of Justice, police and military units in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Soccsksargen went to a grassy portion of Datu Hofer town accompanied by the witness and started digging there.

Galon said authorities had to use a backhoe to dig the mass grave located about 5 kilometers from the national highway.

Senior Supt. Marcelo Pintac, Maguindanao police chief, said the search team would continue to look for other victims of the so-called chainsaw massacres. Edwin Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao