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Trial for Philippino warlord begins with servant testimony
A house servant of a Philippine politically powerful clan, accused last year for the murder of 57 people, spoke out in court about how the family members plotted to kill rivals and journalists over dinner six days before the attack.
On the first day of the trial, almost ten months after the massacre on November 23 in the southern province of Maguindanao, witness Lakmudin Saliao took the stand in court.
30 of the 57 people killed in the ambush were media workers in an election convoy, making it the deadliest singe attack on reporters in the world.
Saliao said the leader of the clan, Andal Ampatuan Sr., gathered his siblings over dinner to discuss ways to stop their political rival from running for the key regional role of provincial governor. Former town mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr, the prime suspect in the massacre, had said "That's easy. If they come here just kill them all,'" Saliao said in court.
Saliao continued that everybody agreed with the plan and just “laughed, saying it’d ok for everybody to be killed.”
Saliao said the Ampatuan patriarch ordered that his rival, Esmael Mangudadatu, must be stopped on a highway where he was supposed to pass on the way to file his candidacy papers.
It was on a nearby hilltop near the highway where troops recovered the 57 bodies gunned down and hastily buried along with some of the victims' vehicles in mass graves. Mangudadatu, who was later elected governor in the May elections, had sent his wife, sisters and other female relatives accompanied by journalists in the belief that their lives would be spared.
The Ampatuans have denied the charges. Andal Ampatuan Jr. and 16 policemen were the first to be arraigned into court. They were ushered in wearing handcuffs, before a courtroom packed with anxious relatives.
Lawyer of the Mangudadatus, Nena Santos, described Saliao's testimony as "a smoking gun."
A prominent senator, Joker Arroyo, has recently warned that the sheer volume of the case, with at least 227 witnesses listed by the prosecution and another 373 by the defense , means it could drag on for "200 years." However, officials refused to comment on how long the trial will take.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the government to protect witnesses and round up more than 100 suspects that are still roaming free, many linked to the Ampatuans' private army.
"With fewer than half of the suspects in custody, witnesses, investigators, and others who might be deemed to be a threat to the Ampatuan family are at risk," the group said in a statement.
