By EDD K. USMAN
The families of the 22 suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf Group who were killed in the March 2005 Bicutan siege will file charges against those involved led by then Interior and Local Government Secretary Angelo Reyes, then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Edgardo Aglipay, and PNP chief Director General Arturo Lomibao, Ren Jalaludin Ropeta, vice chairman of the MoroChristian People’s Alliance (MCPA), said.
"We will file the necessary charges against former DILG Secretary Angelo Reyes, former PNP Chief Aglipay, Director General Arturo Lomibao, and others responsible for the inhumane killings against the Moro inmates, most of (whom) were not part of the handful which attempted to escape," said Ropeta in a statement.
The MCPA official said the findings of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), which Commissioner Wilhelm Soriano defended from critics such as the PNP, may have taken a long time but the Bangsamoro people, particularly families of the 22 fatalities, are nevertheless happy for the CHR’s standing for the truth.
Ropeta said Hadja Insih Moctar, wife of Abu Khayr Moctar, 44, and daughter of Ahmad Upao, 75, who were both killed in the siege, would be among the primary complainants.
"My father and husband were both innocent. They were not real Abu Sayyaf men nor were they part of the jailbreak. We were struggling so hard to just cope with their unjust detention and their expensive and arduous trial. Their unjust killing was so hard to take. It is inhuman beyond words," Hadja Insih said.
Ropeta said the CHR heeded the anguished pleas of the grieving families of the "unjustly slain Moro detainees."
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