The mayor of a Maguindanao town, who had gone into hiding after he was implicated in a so-called “chainsaw massacre” in the province, has asked for a reinvestigation of the multiple murder case filed against him by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in connection with the grisly killings.
In a 21-page motion before the Cotabato City Regional Trial Court, Mayor Samer Uy of Datu Piang town accused Cotabato provincial prosecutor Rodolfo Yanson of railroading the filing of the criminal information against him and five others.
In his petition, Uy asked the lower court to remand the case to the provincial prosecutor’s office for a preliminary investigation and to recall the arrest warrant it had issued against them on March 22.
Uy, brother-in-law of former Maguindanao Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., claimed that Yanson “unduly abridged in haste the conduct of preliminary investigation” in favor of the complainant, Penengkong Abdulrasid, by purportedly denying them of their chance to controvert the allegations against them.
Rights disregarded
“(Yanson) disregarded the rights of the accused to file (his) counter-affidavit, right to the due process of law and to equal protection of the law,” Uy said in a petition dated April 17.
“By the actuations of (Yanson)… (he) showed his utmost bias, prejudice and partiality in favor of the private complainant. He railroaded this case at the expense of herein accused,” the petition added.
Aside from the mayor, also charged with multiple murder were Sukarno Tapaya Uspo, Ben Carandang, Sherhan Uy, Musib Tan and Mike Brando.
Skeletal remains
The case stemmed from the discovery of skeletal remains that a team of investigators from the DOJ and National Bureau of Investigation unearthed in Shariff Aguak, the capital town of Maguindanao.
Uy was believed to have been involved in the slaughter of at least 18 people who were supposedly killed with the use of chainsaws.
The victims were said to be behind the 2003 murder of the late Datu Piang Mayor Saudi Ampatuan Sr., son of Andal Sr. who, along with other sons and relatives, were arrested for the massacre of 57 people, among them 32 media workers, in Maguindanao on Nov. 23, 2009.
Just one day
Uy lamented that Cotabato RTC Branch 15 Judge George Jabino had ordered their arrest merely a day after the criminal information was submitted “without considering the voluminous documents of the case and the lack of counter-affidavits of the respondents.”
He noted that Abdulrasid had filed the same complaint against him in 2010 which, according to him, was also handled by Yanson.
“The case filed by the complainant… is similar to the one she filed way back in 2010,” he said. “That 2010 case had been dismissed by the Cotabato City RTC Branch 13 for lack of probable cause.”