QC court asked to junk Andal Jr's motion vs witness

The prosecution panel in the Maguindanao massacre case has insisted that Ampatuan town vice mayor Rasul Sangki is a "regular witness" and not an accused in the carnage that left 57 people dead on Nov. 23, 2009. This, as the panel asked Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 to junk once and for all principal suspect Andal Ampatuan Jr.'s repeated request for the court to disregard Sangki's testimony. When he testified in court in January 2010, Sangki said he witnessed the incident from the time Andal Jr. and his private army intercepted the convoy led by the wife of then-Buluan town vice mayor Esmael “Toto" Mangudadatu, up to the time the victims were killed. Sangki also claimed that Andal Ampatuan Sr. supposedly masterminded the crime and ordered his son and namesake, Andal Jr. to carry out the killings. He also told the court that he had seen Andal Jr. shoot two women and a journalist he identified as Jimmy "Pal-ak" Cabillo. The accused allegedly used an M-16 armalite with an attached M-203 grenade launcher. Andal Jr.'s legal counsel, Sigfrid Fortun, earlier claimed Sangki was not an "ordinary witness" because his testimony only proved his complicity in the massacre. The court, however, denied Andal Jr.s camp's request to "expunge Sangki's testimony from court records," adding that the accused cannot dictate upon the prosecution who to indict and present as its witness. Andal Jr.'s camp later moved for a reconsideration of Solis-Reyes' decision. But in its latest motion, the prosecution said Andal Jr.'s motion for reconsideration "lacked merit and was only a rehash of his previous pleading." In his affidavit executed late 2009, Sangki also said that he overheard Andal Sr. reminding Andal Jr. what to do with the Mangudadatus, their rival political clan. He likewise said Andal Jr. and his militiamen had fired at the bodies of the victims to make sure they were dead. Sangki denied having shot any of the victims. Aside from Andal Sr. and Andal Jr., two other prominent members of the Ampatuan clan were tagged in the massacre — Zaldy, a suspended Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) governor, and Sajid. — KBK, GMA News