Site of the Maguindanao massacre. A Quezon City court has ordered the transfer of an accused in the 2009 massacre from the custody of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police to the Quezon City Jail. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—A Quezon City court has ordered the transfer of an accused in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre case from the custody of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police to the Quezon City Jail.
Quezon City regional trial court branch 221 Jocelyn Solis-Reyes also directed state witness Sukarno Badal on Tuesday to take the stand in the continuation of proceedings on Wednesday, and on Thursday to resume his testimony.
Reyes issued on Tuesday a commitment order to the warden of the Quezon City Jail Annex at Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig City, directing him to take custody of former Mamasapano town councilman Talembo Masukat who was arrested last week in the Maguindanao province, and has been held at the ARMM Criminal Investigation and Detection Group headquarters in Cotabato City.
Masukat is the 101st of 195 accused to be arrested for the November 23, 2009 carnage at Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman near Ampatuan town in Maguindanao Province, where 58 persons were killed.
He was arrested on Feb. 16 after he and several other armed men engaged members of the Army 45th Infantry Battalion at Barangay Manungkaling, Mamasapano town in Maguindanao. Masukat carried a P300,000 reward for his arrest as one of the suspected perpetrators of the 2009 massacre.
Masukat is identified as a trusted aide of Mamasapano town mayor Bahnarin Ampatuan, another accused in the massacre and grandson of former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. He had also worked as a driver for the ex-governor’s eldest daughter, Bai Rebecca Ampatuan.
He was identified by Datu Abdullah Sangki town councilor Mohammad Sangki as the person who relayed to him the alleged plan to block the Mangudadatu convoy and who deployed on November 19, several days before the massacre, a dozen members of a civilian auxiliary unit to a checkpoint at Crossing Saniag in Sitio Masalay, Ampatuan town.
Meanwhile, Reyes issued a subpoena for state witness Sukarno Badal, a former vice-mayor at Sultan sa Barongis town recently discharged as one of the accused in the Maguindanao massacre case.
Badal, who is under the justice department’s witness protection program, was ordered by the court to continue his testimony during the resumption of the scheduled hearings at the Quezon City regional trial court annex in Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan, Taguig City.
In his testimony last week, Badal claimed that members of the Ampatuan clan had three plans to kill then Buluan vice-mayor and now Maguindanao governor Esmael Mangudadatu.
He testified that there were three options: Manila, Maguindanao, and Cotabato, depending on where Mangudadatu filed his certificate of candidacy (CoC). The Maguindanao governor asked members of his family, lawyers and supporters to file his CoC at Shariff Aguak. It was their convoy, including 32 members of the media, that was blocked at a checkpoint from where they were herded to a secluded area for slaughter.