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Opinion

Mamasapano a month later: Still no justice!

SHOOTING STRAIGHT - Bobit S. Avila - The Freeman

It is exactly a month since Oplan Wolverine/Oplan Exodus was given the go-signal by whom? Until now this is still a mystery. But because Pres. Benigno Aquino III is the commander-in-chief, it is safe to assume that he approved this mission to get Zulfikir Bin Hir a.k.a. Marwan, dead or alive. Unfortunately this mission, despite succeeding in killing Marwan, ended in tragedy because 44 elite Special Action Force soldiers were killed in the ensuing battle against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. A full month has passed and no one from the various groups investigating this military disaster has come up with the truth behind the killing.

The Senate Blue Ribbon committee and the Congressional Committee that started their investigation into what happened suddenly ended up in closed door "executive sessions." Even the MILF had its own fact-finding committee, but as expected, they insist that what happened was a mis-encounter. What is painful here is that, the Aquino Regime has also used the word "mis-encounter" when the Filipino people do not believe that it was.

If you watched the Senate and Congressional investigations, they actually ended up with more questions rather than coming out with the truth. All this is happening because there is a massive cover-up by our senators and congressmen in order to "protect" Pres. Aquino at all cost from responsibility of what we call the 2nd Maguindanao massacre.

Very early in this incident, Pres. Aquino asked Department of Justice Leila de Lima to conduct her own investigation on who should be responsible for this debacle. But we all know that the DOJ Secretary has hit a blank wall and has not come up with any results to help the grieving relatives of the dead SAF men get justice for the dead soldiers. So we ask… why is it taking so long to ferret out the truth? The answer is simple. It is because all the investigating bodies are working feverishly to hide the truth from the Filipino people because if the truth comes out, the Filipino people might just throw Pres. PNoy into the Pasig River!

A case in point is how Malacañang denied for a full three weeks that the US government was involved in this mess. I wrote two full columns, asking whether or not the Americans were involved in this incident, but I got no answer from anyone. Yet three weeks later, when photos of a civilian helicopter, plus photos of a drone was uploaded in Facebook… plus reports of a dead white male Caucasian surfaced, then Malacañang Palace admitted to the involvement of the US through their sharing of intelligence reports. Now why did Malacañang deny this in the first place if they really wanted to tell the truth to the Filipino people?

A full month after this dastardly incident… what we have here are bits and pieces of information. First very vital information was that, the autopsy of the 44 SAF soldiers killed in the Mamasapano incident revealed that at least 26 of these men had superficial or none lethal wounds. But they were shot in the head at close range. Proof of this was a video taken by a cellphone that showed on SAF trooper who was wounded in his legs, then shot in the head at close range by an MILF fighter.

Second vital information was that demand by the MILF not to change anything from the Bangsamoro Basic Law because of the P70 billion that would be given to the MILF to close this supposedly peace deal. But because today all hearings on the BBL have been suspended, the MILF agreed to return the firearms of the SAF men that they killed. But those firearms were cannibalized and the personal effects, such as wallets or cellphones, were not returned. Who are they trying to fool?

Another piece of information that has been established was that PNoy was in the US Drone Center in Zamboanga City. If you recall, during the daring attack against Abu Sabaya, leader of the Abu Sayyaf, a US Drone or AWACS took video footages of the action on real time.

During Operation Neptune Spear, the US mission that ended the life of the numero uno terrorist in the world, Osama Bin Laden, CNN came up with live TV coverage of US Pres. Barrack Obama and State Sec. Hilary Clinton watching TV beamed from Abottabad, Pakistan. I reckon that PNoy had a similar video shown to him on real time video of the incident that led to the massacre of the 44 SAF men. This is why we can't get to the truth as to what PNoy knew when Oplan Exodus was breaking apart.

Finally, the last piece of information that we got is that the MILF will not surrender the men who killed the SAF men. So how can we get justice for the fallen 44 SAF men when the MILF would not surrender the killers, who brutalized the SAF men? This is why the angst of the Filipino people has not dissipated a full month after that tragedy in Mamasapano.

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