Today, the Senate investigation on the Jan. 25, 2015 (a Sunday) massacre of 44 elite police commandos of the Special Action Force of the Philippine National Police, in Mamasapano town, Maguindanao province resumes.
In addition, one notorious global terrorist, 17 Moro bandits and four civilians, including a five-year-old, also died during the daylong firefight a year ago. Sixteen other SAF commandos were severely wounded during the one-sided battle between 74 SAF underpowered commandos and more than 700 well-armed enemy fighters.
From my own reading of the various reports on the massacre and talks with security experts, Operation Exodus was supposed to be literally an easy swim and a picnic in the park, launched at 10:15 p.m. Jan. 24, a Saturday.
Instead, the commandos swam for more than five hours in a river, just 250 meters from the target but which had stronger current than usual. The park turned out to be a dark and difficult terrain where intruders had no place to hide and mount a counterfire. With the environment hostile and foreboding, the commandos were late for their mission target time.
The SAF commandos were to fetch three terrorists—Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan; Ahamak Akmad atabi Usman (Usman), and Amin Baco (Jihad). The three were to be turned over to two teams of SAF commandos, Company 84 called the Main Effort, with 38 men, and Company 55, called the Support Effort with 36 men who were supposed to secure SAF 55’s exit with their quarry. The commandos did not bring enough ammunition good for incessant firing. In fact, they left behind more than 300 of their fully armed SAF colleagues in a convoy of trucks, some three kilometers along the Maharlika Highway leading to Mamasapano. Two Army battalions were also parked on the same highway at the
Somehow, what should have been a peaceful exchange of suspects and ransom money before dawn of Jan. 25, 2015 went awry. Marwan, Basit and Baco were not in a single hut but were 100 meters apart. Marwan was seized and killed, his index finger cut off. Basit and Baco escaped. Suddenly, there was a sudden gunfire and explosion. All hell broke loose. At 5:45 a.m., President BS Aquino III was informed of the good news (the capture and killing of Marwan at 4:15 a.m.) and the bad news (the escape of Usman and Jihad and the offensive launched by 700 terrorists). The snafu was reported by his trusted lieutenant, suspended police Director General Alan Purisima. At that instant, both Aquino and Purisima knew their SAF boys were beleaguered and would be needing help. At 6:20 a.m., Purisima told Aquino: “Elements suffered heavy casualties. They were reportedly overrun.”
At past 7 a.m., Aquino proceeded with a scheduled trip to Zamboanga City where he monitored the Mamasapano developments.
With him in Zamboanga were then Department of Interior and Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, and the acting PNP chief, Leonardo Espina. If anyone of them knew something big had gravely gone wrong, one could not conclude that by the actions of Aquino, Roxas and Gazmin. Nonchalantly, they proceeded with a whole day of activities entirely unrelated to the Mamasapano operation.
Friday before the Jan. 25 massacre, Zamboanga City was rocked by bomb explosions blamed on another terrorist group, the Abu Sayyaf, apparently to extricate 57 detained comrades detained in the city’s jail. Aquino went visiting the bombing victims and their relatives, and unusually, also met the alleged terrorists in jail.
By early evening of Jan. 25, 35 of the 36 men of SAF 55 and nine of the 38 men of SAF 84 had died. No help went to them despite desperation and calls that were voiced by the SAF leaders as early as 6 a.m. of that Sunday. Somebody told the Army, just a few kilometers away, to stand down.
The Senate probe today should validate this narrative. It is not expected to uncover much new ground except perhaps to heighten the criminal and moral culpability of President Aquino III.
At the Senate session of Jan. 18, this year, Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile argued for the urgency of a new Senate committee hearing on the so-called Mamasapano massacre. He said:
“I would like to make it on record that I have evidence: One, that the President of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino, was actively and directly involved in the planning and preparations of Oplan Exodus; two, that on the day of the actual operations, he was monitoring the operations while he was on his plane going to Zamboanga City; and three, that while the operations were going on, and Special Action Forces were being slaughtered, he did not do anything at all to save them.”
During his incarceration as a suspect in the alleged plunder of Senate pork barrel money at Camp Crame, Enrile is understood to have talked to the widows and relatives of the victims and survivors of the Mamasapano massacre. These relatives and survivors must have unburdened themselves to him, their minds heavy with emotion and their hearts seething with anger, over what they perceive is the double-cross and betrayal by their very own commander-in-chief, BS Aquino.
“They were thrown into the lion’s lair,” explained Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte who last Sunday, Jan. 24, 2016, met in Zamboanga City with the survivors and relatives of the 44 SAF commandos slaughtered in Mamasapano, last year.
Duterte could be an expert witness. He is a former prosecutor and a mean San Beda-trained lawyer. Besides, he is a crucial eyewitness. “I know something about the government action during the Mamasapano incident because I was at the base camp with President Aquino, and if I am called to the Senate inquiry I will tell the truth of what I know because I have the moral obligation to tell what I know,” Duterte told the SAF relatives.
For his part, Harvard-trained lawyer Enrile will use all his legal wherewithal and examination prowess to the desired conclusion of the Senate investigation.
There are two major reports on Mamasapano, one by the PNP Board of Inquiry, and the other, by the Senate committees on Public Order; Peace, Unification and Reconciliation; and Finance. The Senate version was just an Executive Committee never submitted to the Senate as a whole in plenary session for discussion and approval.