Maguindanao massacre backhoe operator to be arraigned next week

Site of the Maguindanao massacre. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — A Quezon City court has ordered the arraignment next week of the operator of the backhoe that dug the pit in which the 58 victims of the Maguindanao massacre and some of their vehicles were buried in an apparent attempt to hide the grisly crime in 2009.

Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of Branch 221 of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court set on August 14 the arraignment of Bong Andal, who has been dropped as a state witness by the panel that is prosecuting nearly 200 people accused of planning and carrying out the November 23, 2009 slaughter of 58 persons in Maguindanao.

In her three-page order, Reyes dismissed Andal’s appeal to be reconsidered as a state witness on grounds that the prosecutors had not fully evaluated his testimony and were unaware of all its details.

He claimed that fear for the lives of his relatives prevented him from disclosing everything he knew of the carnage and that he remained under the Department of Justice’s witness protection program.

Andal said also that the judge’s order for his transfer from the Philippine National Police Custodial Center in Camp Crame to the Quezon City Jail annex would put his life in danger because of his willingness to testify against his co-accused.

But the judge found no merit in Andal’s appeal, ruling that he could not compel the panel of prosecutors to seek his exclusion from the list of accused since the prosecutors had decided not to use him as a witness.

Reyes stressed that the prosecutors had the prerogative as to whom to present as prosecution witnesses during the trial.

She directed Andal’s immediate transfer to the Quezon City Jail Annex in addition to setting his arraignment at the makeshift court at the Quezon City Jail Annex in Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.

State prosecutors previously dropped Andal as a witness and asked the court for his immediate arraignment  on 58 counts of murder. The prosecutors noted that the testimony of state witness Sukarno Badal covered what the backhoe operator had offered to testify on.