Roque: 58th murder charge vs Ampatuans wouldn’t matter as they’ll still be serving life terms

Andal Ampatuan Jr., left, a former town mayor who oversaw and led the killings, waits with co-accused during a promulgation at a court inside a prison facility at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City on Thursday. (SC-PIO via AP)

MANILA, Philippines — A 58th charge of murder against those convicted in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre would not matter as they’d still serve the maximum punishment allowed by law, Harry Roque said Friday.

Roque, who serves as the lawyers for the victims of the country’s worst political murders, said this even as he acknowledged it would be difficult for the family of Reynaldo Momay to accept. The photojournalist was identified as the 58th victim although his body has never been found.

“Well, let me start by saying something that would be difficult to accept to the Momay family. But when 27 individuals were found guilty of 57 counts of murder, a 58th charge won’t matter because, anyway, they would serve the full 30 years without the benefit of parole,” Roque said in an interview over ANC’s “Headstart”

On Thursday, Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes sentenced eight members of the Ampatuan family led by former town Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., who she said oversaw and led the killings, and 20 others to life imprisonment without parole.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1202724/breaking-andal-ampatuan-jr-kin-guilty-for-maguindanao-massacre-of-57-people

All were sentenced to reclusion perpetua or up to 40 years of imprisonment without the benefit of parole for killing  57 people dead, including 32 media workers, in a brazen execution-style attack that horrified the world. They were also ordered to compensate the victims’ families.

However, Solis-Reyes did not acknowledge Momay as the 58th victim as “the prosecution only established with moral certainty that after having been sighted with the convoy of journalists, he was never found after 10 a.m. that day.”

The family of Momay said that justice had not been fully served for them.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1203558/no-58th-victim-judge-rules-momay-daughter-protests

Nevertheless, Roque acknowledged that Momay’s family has “a right to reparation.”

“And part of the reparation is an official statement from the state that they were in fact made victims,” Roque said.

“So I don’t understand why the judge had to acquit on the 58th charge because in the first place, there was a testimony that he in fact was there part of the coverage,” the lawyer argued.

“Number two, his dentures were identified by the live-in partner, and even identified by the one who made the dentures. So what more do you want?”

Asked what would happen next to the Momay family, he answered: “We will not stop. We will fight until the state recognizes that Momay was also a victim of the Maguindanao massacre.”

Ampatuan Jr. was convicted of leading nearly 200 armed followers who blocked a seven-vehicle convoy carrying the relatives and lawyers of Esmael Mangudadatu, who was running for governor of Maguindanao province. He challenged the powerful Ampatuan clan, which held sway over almost every aspect of life in the impoverished region long wracked by a Muslim insurgency.

The journalists joined the convoy to cover the filing of Mangudadatu’s candidancy in an election office in Maguindanao’s capital. Mangudadatu, now a legislator in the House of Representatives, did not join the convoy to ensure his safety.

The gunmen commandeered the convoy, including the passengers of two unsuspecting cars that got stuck in the traffic, to a nearby hilltop, where a waiting backhoe had dug huge pits to be used to bury the victims and their vehicles.

The court found that Ampatuan Jr. and his followers opened fire on the victims at close range and hurriedly escaped after sensing that army troops were approaching. The mutilated bodies were found inside the vans, sprawled on the ground or buried in the pits with some of the vehicles, in a gruesome scene that drew international outrage and shocked many even in a country long used to political violence.

With the Associated Press