QC court asked to free witness' kin from Ampatuan custody

The prosecution in the Maguindanao massacre trial asked a Quezon City court on Thursday to continue hearing a petition seeking to free the daughter and grandchildren of witness Datu Zacaria Sangki from the custody of the Ampatuans. Sangki, in an appeal for habeas corpus, earlier alleged that Rebecca Ampatuan, the respondent in the petition, has been holding his daughter Amina Sangki Ampatuan and her two children inside their mansion in Shariff Aguak town, Maguindanao. A habeas corpus plea is a legal action through which a person can be freed from unlawful detention. It is the quickest way to free a person held for no legal reason. Sangki claimed that his daughter and grandchildren were being held so that Rebecca could get back at Amina's brother, Ampatuan mayor Rasul Sangki. Rasul was one of the first witnesses who implicated prime suspect and former Datu Unsay mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. in the November 23, 2009 massacre. Amina is the wife of former Mamasapano mayor Bahnarin Ampatuan, another Ampatuan clan member who is among the 196 individuals charged with 57 counts of murder. Rebecca has earlier filed before the Supreme Court's Second Division a petition for certiorari against the elder Sangki's habeas corpus request. Rebecca is the eldest daughter of clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr. and wife of Tato Ampatuan. However, in a three-page petition filed Thursday, Sangki said their request for the issuance of a writ of a habeas corpus should already resume after the Supreme Court dismissed last December Rebecca's petition for certiorari. "It is most respectfully moved that proceedings to hear and decide this petition resume and the writ of the habeas corpus issue against respondent [Rebecca] to produce the persons of Amina Sangki Ampatuan and her two minor children... as well as her newly-born child," Sangki said. Sangki also asked Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes to task the National Bureau of Investigation in the serving of the writ of habeas corpus. – VVP, GMANews.TV