MARAWI CITY, Philippines — It was the families of the four suspects in the August 14 rape-slay here of a 13-year-old Maranaw girl that volunteered their execution, community elders said Wednesday.
Barangay officials here and in nearby Lanao del Sur towns confirmed that all of four confessed rape suspects—Jabbar Macacua, Elias Pimping, Salman Udag and Jalil Sani—had been killed one after another by angry relatives of the rape victim after the police set them free Monday.
The four were first arrested over the weekend with the help of vigilant Marawi City residents, detained at the city jail, but eventually set free owing to the absence of complainants.
PREVIOUS REPORT: 4 detained rapists of vice governor's kin shot dead
"The police released the suspects because no one filed any complaint against them," said a prominent Maranaw community elder, who asked not to be identified.
Highly-placed sources, among them local officials, said the four suspects had been killed one after another before dawn Tuesday.
The sources also confirmed that the parents of the four rapists had signed waivers stating that the relatives of the Maranaw girl they raped can execute them if they want just to protect other family members from vendetta attacks.
"Ayaw na nilang lumaki pa ang gulo. Ayaw nilang magkaroon ng 'rido' between their families and the relatives of the slain child," a local official said.
Superintendent Agustin Tello, director of the Lanao del Sur police, was quoted in radio reports as saying that the suspects were released from detention since no one had filed criminal cases against them.
Tello had also denied circulating stories and Facebook posts by relatives and sympathizers, among them officials of various cause-oriented groups, that the four men, who had confessed to their involvement in the rape and murder of the Maranaw girl, had all been killed.
Maranaw activists and officials of non-government organizations had confirmed, via Facebook, that all four had indeed been killed.
One report says the four men were killed in an open space behind an abandoned hospital in the city's outskirts while another stated they were brought somewhere along Lake Lanao where they were finished with rifle shots in the head.
"Justice served, no question," a Maranaw friend of journalists in Cotabato City commented on a Facebook thread on the issue.
Another Maranaw, who is an incumbent barangay official, urged his fellow residents in the province and the media to put closure to the issue now that all four rapists had been executed.
"In Maranaw culture, it is better to kill a hundred men and go scot-free than rape a woman," a barangay councilor said on a Facebook post.
Sources from the city government said one of the four rape suspects was a cousin of a certain Otik, a henchman of an incumbent official.
Otik, who was implicated in many heinous offenses, has reportedly been protecting criminal syndicates in Marawi City and nearby towns in Lanao del Sur.