{"id":21774,"date":"2015-12-10T10:21:40","date_gmt":"2015-12-10T10:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/philippine-police-officers-fired-over-2009\/"},"modified":"2015-12-10T10:21:02","modified_gmt":"2015-12-10T10:21:02","slug":"philippine-police-officers-fired-over-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/philippine-police-officers-fired-over-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippine police officers fired over 2009 massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"

{All but one of the 21 officers found guilty of grave misconduct during attack in Maguindanao that killed 58 people.}<\/p>\n

The Philippines’ police board has dismissed 21 officers for being “co-conspirators” in the country’s worst political massacre six years ago when the son of a politician and his bodyguards shot dead 58 people, including 32 journalists.<\/p>\n

The officers were dismissed for failing to stop the killings in the southern province of Maguindanao in November 2009, according to a police statement issued on Thursday.<\/p>\n

All but one of the officers were found guilty of grave misconduct.<\/p>\n

The remaining officer, Inspector Saudi Matabalao Mokamad, was found to have ignored the shooting he heard from the crime scene and to have failed to report it to his superiors.<\/p>\n

He was dismissed on lesser charges.<\/p>\n

“The 20 respondents were held liable for opting to become silent spectators to a crime unfolding before their very eyes,” said the statement.<\/p>\n

“Their inaction manifests complicity and unity of action to those who committed the abduction, and later the murders, themselves.”<\/p>\n

The main suspect accused of ordering the killings, Andal Ampatuan Sr, died of a heart attack in a government hospital in July of this year.<\/p>\n

His son went on trial in 2010 and is currently in jail.<\/p>\n

The officers were accused as “co-conspirators” for setting up a checkpoint and for blocking the convoy of the victims who were on their way to file the certificate of candidacy of Vice Mayor Esmael Toto Mangudadatu, who was running against a member of the influential Ampatuan clan.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera’s Marta Ortigas, reporting from Manila, said the case “was really a rivalry between two political clans”.<\/p>\n

She said 22 members of the rival family were among the dead.<\/p>\n

“The justice system in the Philippines is renowned for going very, very slowly,” she said.<\/p>\n

“A case against a single suspect can take up to 10 years. In this case, there are over 100 named suspects all involved in one major trial. No convictions are expected any time soon.”<\/p>\n

The massacre, one of the world’s deadliest attacks against media workers, saw some shot in their genitals before they were buried in a hilltop grave using an excavator.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the victims’ families welcomed the dismissal of the police officers before adding that they were “very disappointed” with the pace of the dismissal proceedings.<\/p>\n

“This is the very first time since the massacre six years ago that the victims have received some form of justice,” they said.<\/p>\n

The slow pace of the legal proceedings has angered the families of the victims and frustrated President Benigno Aquino, who took office in 2010 and promised a verdict before his term finishes in mid-2016.<\/p>\n

All the accused police officers are currently detained at the Quezon City jail annex in Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig, facing multiple murder charges before a Quezon City regional trial court.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n

SOURCE:AL JAZEERA:[Philippine police officers fired over 2009 massacre->http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2015\/12\/philippine-police-officers-fired-2009-massacre-151210054859684.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{All but one of the 21 officers found guilty of grave misconduct during attack in Maguindanao that killed 58 people.} The Philippines’ police board has dismissed 21 officers for being “co-conspirators” in the country’s worst political massacre six years ago when the son of a politician and his bodyguards shot dead 58 people, including 32 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000070759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-21774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000070759,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21774.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000070759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21774"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=21774"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=21774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}