TROOPS FOIL SULTAN KUDARAT
ZAMBOANGA CITY: Government troops on Friday recovered four mortar bombs in the compartment of an abandoned motorcycle in the town of Isulan in Sultan Kudarat province in the southern Philippines, officials said.
Officials said that the explosives were discovered after residents noticed a cell phone and a battery hanging from the motorcycle parked in downtown Isulan.
“Concerned citizens in the area immediately reported the abandoned motorcycle and the army [ of] EOD [ Explosive Ordnance Disposal] safely recovered the improvised explosives,” Col. Prudencio Asto, a spokesman for the 6th Infantry Division, told The Manila Times.
He said that they recovered two .81mm and two .60mm mortar bombs from the motorcycle toolbox.
The discovery of the explosives coincided with the commemoration of the third anniversary of the brutal killings of 58 people, among them 32 journalists and media workers by some 200 gunmen in nearby Maguindanao province.
The journalists were in a political convoy covering the filing of candidacy of gubernatorial candidate Esmael Mangudadatu, when gunmen intercepted them in the highway and brought to a hill where they were mutilated and shot.
About half of those accused in the grizzly killings, including members of the political Ampatuan clan, had been arrested and captured and are facing trials in Manila.
The Human Rights Watch said that the slow pace of the “Maguindanao Massacre” trial and the government’s failure to arrest nearly a hundred suspects raise grave concerns for the safety of witnesses and for obtaining justice for the victims.
“Three years since the horrors of the Maguindanao Massacre, the trial crawls along, half of the suspects remain at large, and the victims’ families still face threats. Yet the larger problem is that the Aquino administration has done next to nothing to disband the rest of the country’s private armies,” Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement sent to The Manila Times.
The massacre, the worst in recent Philippines history, resulted in charges against senior members of the Ampatuan clan, which controlled Maguindanao province for more than two decades. The family ruled through a “private army” of 2,000 to 5,000 armed men comprised of governmentsupported militia, local police and military personnel.
Mangudadatu had posed a political threat to the Ampatuans, hence the plot to stop him from running, according to witnesses at the trial. Mangudadatu is now governor of Maguindanao.
The Human Rights Watch said that the trial so far has mostly concerned the 56 bail petitions filed before the court. The prosecution has yet to complete its presentation of evidence and witnesses.
“Relatives of victims have alleged that they have faced threats, intimidation, and bribery, allegedly from Ampatuan supporters; one of the widows decided to leave the Philippines this year out of fear. Since the massacre, lawyers for Mangudadatu said at least three actual or potential witnesses have been killed, including an Ampatuan militia member named Suwaib Upham who had agreed to testify and who had sought witness protection that never materialized,” it said.
In November, the Supreme Court rejected a petition seeking live television coverage of the trial. Relatives of the victims told Human Rights Watch of their hopes that the live coverage would lend transparency to the proceedings and encourage the court to expedite hearings.