MANILA, Philippines—Two years after the gruesome Maguindanao massacre that left 57 people dead, police are stepping up efforts to solve the case despite the reassignment of some of the officers originally tasked to investigate the crime.
Chief Superintendent Benito Estipona, who heads Special Investigation Task Group Maguindanao, said that some of the policemen tasked to solve the case have been reassigned or transferred, including the regional police chief.
He said that changes in assignments meant that the new officers who will be handling the case will have to be oriented with the developments.
The police have reconstituted 20 five-member tracker teams to search for the 101 remaining suspects.
Police have rounded up and jailed 95 of the 196 accused.
Estipona said that aside from the tracker teams, the authorities have also organized community support volunteers from Mindanao to help in capturing the accused.
The CIDG has also reprinted 6,000 copies of the wanted posters and urged the public to cooperate with the police in bringing the suspects to justice.
He said that 10 former policemen, four former soldiers, 10 Ampatuan clan members, seven of the clan’s allies, and 70 members of a private armed group were the subject of manhunt operations of the SITG Maguindanao.
He explained that some of the suspects who remained at large were tough to capture as they have assumed new identities, requiring police officers to conduct deeper investigation and intelligence gathering “to ascertain that they are the subjects of arrest warrants.”
Estipona said that the rugged terrain of mountainous areas where some of the accused may have gone into hiding made “manhunt operations more difficult but nevertheless, we assure that with our continued monitoring as to their locations… in due time we hope that we will eventually be able to arrest them.”
“We cannot discount the possibility that they still have that vast influence but then this is because of the long time they ruled in that area,” he said, adding that authorities believes that most of the suspects were hiding in or near Maguindanao.
Investigators are verifying whether some of the accused have gone into MILF territories, said Estipona.
“We are calling on all concerned citizens to help us locate these wanted persons,” said the SITG Maguindanao chief, encouraging those with information which could lead to the arrests of the suspects to contact any CIDG or PNP office.
He assured the public that any information provided “will be treated with utmost confidentiality.”
A P250,000 bounty is being offered for the capture of each suspect, said Estipona, adding that P300,000 is being offered for the arrest of each of the 10 suspects who are members of the Ampatuan clan.
Estipona assured the families of the victims of the Maguindanao massacre that the CIDG “will remain steadfast in our effort to run after the perpetrators and… will not stop until all of them have been brought to justice.”