Fiscals buck Ampatuan nephew’s bid to attend child’s graduation

MANILA, Philippines - The prosecution panel in the three-year Maguindanao massacre trial is opposing a bid of suspect Akmad “Tato” Ampatuan to attend his daughter’s graduation in Manila on July 6.

In a three-page motion released to the media yesterday, the panel led by State Prosecutor Archimedes Manabat said Akmad “is a flight risk, being involved in a high-profile case, whose rights as a detention prisoner, especially his personal liberty, are necessarily restrained.”

Akmad – a son-in-law and nephew of clan patriarch former Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. – earlier asked Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes to allow him to attend the graduation of his daughter.

“As father and human being, Datu Tato wants to personally attend a very significant and once in a lifetime activity of his daughter,” read the motion.

In opposing the motion, the prosecutors cited the court’s earlier ruling that junked a similar plea of Akmad’s brother-in-law former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy Ampatuan, who wanted to attend his son’s high school graduation earlier this year.

In an earlier order, Solis-Reyes said that attending a graduation was not among the circumstances listed in the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology manual for the movement and transfer of detainees.

Akmad, who also has a pending motion asking the court to allow him to undergo medical treatment at the Philippine General Hospital, is set to be arraigned tomorrow with his two brothers-in-law, Anwar Sr. and Sajid Islam.

Some members of the Ampatuan political family were tagged in the massacre, which claimed the lives of 58 people, including 32 media practitioners. They have denied involvement in the crime.