Commandos of the 55th Special Action Force Company fired first at fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, triggering the battle that wiped out the elite police unit in Barangay Tukanalipao, Mamasapano, Maguindanao on January 25.
This was the conclusion of the joint team from the National
Bureau of Investigation and National Prosecution Service tasked to investigate
the outcome of the disastrous SAF mission to get Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli
bin Hir, alias “Marwan,” who was killed, and the clash that ensued, which left
44 police commandos, 17 MILF fighters and at least three civilians dead.
Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, who made the NBI-NPS report
public Wednesday, also said she has approved charges of direct assault
complexed with murder and theft against 90 suspects -- members of the MILF, the
Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and private armed groups -- in the deaths
of 35 members of the 55th SAC, which served as the blocking force during the
operation against Marwan.
Only one member of the 55th SAC -- Police Officer 2
Christopher Lalan -- survived.
The investigations into the deaths of nine members of the
84th SAC, or Seaborne, the unit that actually located and subsequently killed
Marwan, as well as the killing of four sleeping MILF members, which Lalan is
accused of, have yet to be finished for lack of witnesses, De Lima explained.
She has given the NBI-NPS team two more months to complete
its probes into these incidents.
De Lima said the NBI-NPS report’s conclusions differ from
that of the Senate investigation, which described the Mamasapano incident as a
“massacre.”
“It was not a massacre as graphically described by the
Senate, nor a simple mis-encounter as clinically suggested by the MILF,” she
said. “Rather, the complicated truth is somewhat in between those two
extremes.”
De Lima said the NBI-NPS team also recommended, for security
reasons, that the suspects not be identified, at least until a formal complaint
is filed.
“To prematurely identify these suspects before the charges
against them are filed gives these suspects (who are presently at large) all
the more reason to evade the law and will make it difficult for law enforcement
agencies to arrest them, perhaps requiring another Oplan Exodus-type of
operation for their capture,” De Lima said, referring to the codename for the
disastrous SAF mission.
The same goes for the eyewitness, identified only through
the codename “Marathon ,” De Lima said was
instrumental in identifying the 90 suspects.
Although the report said it was the SAF that initiated
hostilities in Tukanalipao, by 8 a.m., the MILF, BIFF and private armed group
gunmen who engaged them in a “pintakasi” already knew they were
fighting government forces.
It also said a number of the police commandos tried to
surrender but were fired on until they could no longer fight back because they
were either dead or severely wounded.
After the fighting eased, it added, MILF fighters finished
off dying members of the 55th SAC.
“When the firefight deteriorated still into the killing of
the 55th SAC members, even as the latter already raised their arms in
surrender, the perpetrators became liable for the complex crime of Direct
Assault with Murder. Treachery and abuse of superior strength are easily two
qualifying circumstances that attended the killing of the 55th SAC members at
that point, who, according to witnesses, number to a thousand,” the NBI-NPS
report said.
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