‘A continuing crime’

Time heals all wounds. But the healing takes a bit longer without closure.

For those who have been wronged, closure comes with justice. Falling short of that, they will settle for the truth. With the truth may come an admission of guilt, and perhaps a plea for forgiveness.

It’s been more than 24 years since former Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was shot dead together with his military-tagged assassin Rolando Galman.

Memories of even the most atrocious crimes tend to fade. With the passage of time, it is easier to forgive and forget. Unless someone jars our memory, reminding us of the absence of closure for the bereaved.

The other day Ninoy’s only son and namesake, Sen. Noynoy Aquino III, rang me up and reminded me of all the loose ends, all the questions left unanswered even as 15 soldiers and a military general were convicted and spent the prime of their lives in prison for the twin murders.

We have forgotten most of those details that don’t add up, details that must be clarified before those left behind by Ninoy Aquino will find closure.

Noynoy has been the one speaking for the family when it comes to the latest efforts to grant pardon to the 13 soldiers serving double life terms at the national penitentiary.

As far as he is concerned, Noynoy told me, there are two crimes involved here. One is the double murder. The other, which has gone unpunished, is the cover-up, with the soldiers insisting that it was Galman who shot Ninoy.

“The cover-up,” Noynoy said, “is still a continuing crime.”

*     *     *

Remember the photographs of the assassination on the airport tarmac, the witnesses’ testimonies? Go over the Sandiganbayan decision, and then the final Supreme Court affirmation of the conviction, Noynoy suggested.

Having been one of the reporters who covered part of the second trial, I remember.

The Marcos regime was clearly ready for Ninoy’s arrival at the Manila International Airport on Aug. 21, 1983, even if Ninoy traveled under a false name. The arrival area, from the tarmac to the airport lounge where journalists normally await VIPs, was “sanitized” by the Aviation Security Command (Avsecom).

Five Avsecom men boarded the plane to fetch Ninoy. As he was led down the stairs by the team that was supposed to serve as his close-in escorts, their commanding officer stood by the door, blocking the rest of the passengers including foreign journalists from following Ninoy.

Then the fatal shots rang out, and there was chaos. Noynoy told me that one of the plane passengers in fact managed to get a clear view of what happened.

About two weeks after the assassination, a mutual friend arranged to have Cory and Noynoy meet with the woman in a hut without lights in Pampanga. Even in the darkness, Cory and her son could see that the woman was very scared. The woman told them that she saw Ninoy shot by one of the soldiers.

Seeing how the woman was badly shaken, and thinking that there could be other eyewitnesses, Cory and Noynoy did not press the woman to testify. The nation, after all, was still under a dictatorship. Noynoy never saw the woman again.

But even without her testimony, consider the actions of the soldiers, Noynoy said. When the shots rang out, none of them looked in the direction of Galman, where the sound of the gunshots was supposed to have come from. They did not register surprise, Noynoy said; not even the best training in the world could have made them do that.

“It’s hard to believe there was no conspiracy,” Noynoy said. “Look at the pictures… all of them were positioned as if it were a training exercise. Most of their gestures were indicative of somebody fleeing the crime.”

When the close-in team finally picked up the bleeding Ninoy, they didn’t handle him like a critically injured man. Instead he was tossed into the Avsecom van “like a sack of potatoes,” Noynoy noted.

This part many Filipinos probably still remember well: Ninoy and Galman were then driven around in the van for an interminable time before being taken to a hospital, where of course the two men were pronounced dead.

A painful possibility for Ninoy’s heirs was that he still showed signs of life when tossed into the van, but was beaten to death with a blow to the head. A portion of the “very thorough” Sandiganbayan decision, Noynoy said, noted a crack in his father’s skull that was not consistent with the way Ninoy had collapsed on the tarmac.

The Public Attorney’s Office submitted to Noynoy’s Senate office last Tuesday a copy of what the PAO said was the forensic report of an independent team from the University of the Philippines, which would show that Galman was indeed Ninoy’s assassin.

Noynoy pointed out that the report was the same one submitted by the PAO to the Supreme Court in 2004 in seeking a new trial based on new evidence. The SC dismissed the report as “baseless, speculative” and later affirmed with finality the conviction of the soldiers.

“They were not innocent bystanders,” Noynoy told me as he stressed that they did not expect the soldiers to know the mastermind. “They knew at least, through varying degrees, that something was about to transpire.”

*     *     *

So what would make the soldiers stick to their story, 24 years after the crime?

Noynoy would only speculate that there are ways of buying silence in this country. Did the soldiers’ incarceration leave their families impoverished?

He also pointed out that shortly after the 1986 people power revolt, one of the soldiers, Rogelio Moreno, issued a statement to what was then the police Criminal Investigation Service, admitting that he was the triggerman. As in many such admissions in this country, however, Moreno later recanted.

Ninoy’s heirs still await the truth.

“(The soldiers) are still obstructing justice,” Noynoy said. “In that sense, they have not been rehabilitated… (Now) society owes them freedom? I don’t think so.”