Ampatuan clan members to be transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa

Five members of the Ampatuan clan linked to the November 23 massacre in Maguindanao will be flown to Manila on Friday night for their transfer to a regular lock-up facility in Taguig City, police said. Clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., suspended Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor Zaldy Ampatuan, and clan members Sajid, Anwar and Akmad are expected arrive from Davao City at Villamor Airbase in Pasay City at past 10 p.m. Friday, Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina, chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) public information office, told GMANews.TV. They will be detained at Camp Bagong Diwa. Currently, the clan patriarch is under military custody at a Davao City hospital. The four other Ampatuans are under the custody of the PNP's Criminal Investigation Group in General Santos City. The accused Ampatuans had earlier been ordered released by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 77 after it junked a rebellion case against them late last year. But since they are facing separate charges of murder for the November 23 massacre in Salman village, Ampatuan, they have to remain behind bars. Suspended Datu Unsay mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., who had been detained at the National Bureau of Inevstigation for the last five months, had already been transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa on Thursday. He is considered the prime suspect in the bloody carnage, where 57 people, mostly belonging in an electoral convoy that included journalists, were killed. Espina said the 50 other individuals also accused of murder for the killings are set to be transferred to Camp Bagong Diwa from the PNP Custodial Center at Camp Crame, in Quezon City on Saturday. It was the Supreme Court, last Tuesday, which ordered the transfer of all the accused. Andal Jr. was initially the only suspect included in the hearing. He pleaded not guilty. However, the Justice department later recommended the filing of murder charges to 196 other members of the Ampatuan and the local police. Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes has already approved a motion to admit the 196 others into the case, but their arraignment has yet to be conducted, pending several motions from the accused. - RJAB Jr., GMANews.TV