POLICE operatives yesterday arrested in Datu Saudi Ampatuan town in Maguindanao a suspect in the gruesome November 2009 Maguindanao massacre.
Maj. Jemar Delos Santos, spokesman of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) regional police office, named the suspect as Faisal Dimaukom, alias Kagi Faizal, 42.
Delos Santos said Dimaukom was nabbed at around 5:05 in the morning in barangay Kabinge by personnel from BARMM PNP’s Regional Intelligence Division, Regional Mobile
Force Battalion and Datu Saudi Ampatuan police station.
Dimaukom was among the 80 suspects in the Maguindanao massacre who remain at-large.
The arrest of Dimaukom came weeks after a Quezon City court handed down a guilty verdict on 28 primary suspects in the massacre of 57 people — mostly mediamen, including several members of the Ampatuan clan.
The QC court has ordered the arrest of the suspects who have remained at large for the past 10 years. The order prompted PNP officer-in-charge Lt. Gen. Archie Gamboa to order an all-out manhunt against the 80 suspects, which includes a police inspector.Seized from Dimaukom was a fragmentation grenade.
Meanwhile, the Quezon City Regional Trial Court yesterday gave the prosecution three days to comment on the motion filed by former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy Ampatuan seeking his transfer from his detention cell at the maximum security compound of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City to the infirmary on account of his poor health.
Quezon City RTC Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes also directed the prosecution to comment within the same period on Zaldy’s request to allow his therapist to see him in his cell three times a week.
It was Solis-Reyes who issued the historic judgment meeting lengthy prison sentences to Zaldy and other members of the Ampatuan clan in connection with the 2009 Maguindanao murder cases.
In his urgent petition filed last December 23, 2019, the former ARMM governor cited his “deteriorating and debilitating physical and medical condition” after he suffered three strokes in a span of two months, besides dealing with hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and chronic atrial fibrillation as the main reason for his request.
Zaldy said he is also taking 22 listed medicines for his condition, on top of having therapy and rehabilitation for his strokes. — With Ashzel Hachero
