Zaldy Ampatuan’s bid to turn state witness nixed

A lawyer for some of the families of the victims of the Maguindanao massacre on Friday said former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy Ampatuan’s bid to be included in the government’s Witness Protection Program (WPP) was a ploy aimed at having himself freed from jail after being arrested as one of the accused in the slayings.

“That’s what we suspected all along, WPP to evade incarceration for [the] massacre. Zaldy is so predictable,” lawyer Harry Roque told the Inquirer in a text message.

Roque said he hoped that President Aquino and Justice Secretary Leila de Lima “will not fall for it.”

Ampatuan had submitted a two-page affidavit to the Department of Justice (DOJ), alleging that former president and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel Arroyo orchestrated the rigging of the results of the 2007 senatorial elections.

In the affidavit, Zaldy signified his desire to avail himself of the WPP as a witness in the alleged poll fraud.

Zaldy, his father Andal Ampatuan Sr., and brother Andal Jr., are among the accused in the massacre that claimed the lives of 57 people.

Zaldy professed innocence in the massacre but implicated his father and brother.

De Lima, reacting to Roque’s statement, did not discount the possibility of putting Ampatuan in the program.

She said that if he applied, the matter would be “thoroughly and seriously studied.”

De Lima said the joint DOJ-Comelec fact-finding committee would evaluate Ampatuan’s affidavit and determine if it merited being included as a key element in the government’s poll fraud investigation.

For the sake of “academic discussion,”  she said, assuming that Zaldy applied for inclusion in the WPP and was qualified to be taken in, “There are ways to do it without really freeing him.”

She noted that Ampatuan was in a cell separate from his father and brother and others accused in the Maguindanao massacre.

“He could be held in the same facility. That would be sufficient. The last resort is to give him a safe house. The program is flexible to adopt, to fulfill its mandate without affecting the current status of Zaldy as an accused. But that is only an academic discussion,” De Lima said.