One more suspect in Maguindanao massacre nabbed

Bodies recovered from a shallow grave where at least 50 were found buried in Datu Ampatuan, Maguindanao. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/REM ZAMORA

COTABATO CITY – Another suspect in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre was arrested in the town of Datu Saudi Ampatuan in Maguindanao, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police said Saturday.

A CIDG report said Alimudin Sanguyod, alias Norodin Garaputan, did not put up any resistance when presented with an arrest warrant signed by Quezon City Judge Jocelyn Solis after he was spotted by CIDG agents at Crossing Salbu.

The report described Sanguyod as a member of the Ampatuan private militia. Sanguyod had a prize of P250,000 on his head and is the 108th suspect to have been arrested in the continuing hunt for the perpetrators of the grisly slaughter of 58 people, 32 of them journalist and media workers, in Maguindanao on Nov. 23, 2009.

The victims were on their way to the Maguindanao office of the Commission on Elections in Shariff Aguak for the filing of the certificate of candidacy of then Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu of Buluan, who was running for governor of the province. Followers of the Ampatuan clan, which had ruled the province since 1986, intercepted the group’s motorcade and gunned down everyone of them in the worst case of election violence in Philippine history.

The patriarch of the clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and several of his sons, including Mangudadatu’s expected rival in the elections – Andal Jr.—top the list of 197 persons who have been charged with multiple murder for the massacre.

With Sanguyod’s arrest, 89 more suspects remain at large.

Sanguyod is currently being held at the detention facility of the CIDG in Cotabato City pending a court order for his trasnfer to a jail in Taguig City in Metro Manila where most of the other accused in the case are locked up pending trial.

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