By JOSEHPH HOLANDES UBALDE
Interaksyon.com
SUSPENDED ARMM governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of the prime suspects in the 2009 killings of 58 people in Maguindanao, will likely spend his jail time in the hospital if doctors checking his health will recommend it, Ampatuan’s legal counsel said Wednesday.
Lawyer Firdausi Abbas said the court already approved their petition for Ampatuan’s medical check up at the Philippine Heart Center (PHC) for his various ailments that include diabetes and chronic back pains. Abbas said the PHC unlike St. Luke’s Hospital, cannot refuse to admit the Maguindanao Massacre suspect because it is a government hospital.
“The order already came out for his check up at the Heart Center. It will be brought to the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Annex in Bicutan and it will be verified by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP),” Abbas said in a TV interview. “The doctor will determine if there is basis to that (hospital arrest) or a recommendation for him to be confined.”
According to Abbas, Ampatuan is currently “feeling weak” and has difficulty in breathing.
“He has an oxygen tank beside him in the jail cell,” Abbas added. “But he’s fine.”
Chief Inspector Agnes Aglipay, head of the Health Service Unit of the BJMP-National Capital Region, recommended in a July 12 memorandum for Ampatuan to undergo medical exams in a “hospital setting.”
Aglipay said the 43-year-old multiple murder suspect needs to “be brought to the nearest government hospital on an outpatient basis or depending on the recommendation of the attending physicians on the receiving government hospital.”
Abbas stressed that more than the physical problems, his client needs to be checked for the “psychological impact” of his ordeal.
“He has no fault. He doesn’t understand why he’s there (in jail),” he said.
But Harry Roque, legal counsel of the victims’ families, told InterAksyon that they will remain vigilant. “We will make sure that his visit to the hospital is solely because of medical necessity,” Roque said.
According to Roque, the Ampatuan clan’s longtime maid Lakmodin Saliao already testified before that his former masters will try to undergo hospital arrest to prevent incarceration in jail.
Ampatuan, one of those charged as principal for the mass murder of 58 persons, including 32 media workers, came out in television interviews aired early this week offering to testify against his father, Andal Sr., and brother, Andal Jr.
Although 58 persons in all died, only 57 counts of murder have been filed because the body of one of the victims, photojournalist Reynaldo “Bebot” Momay, has yet to be found.
Soon after the interviews were aired, Ampatuan again made an offer to tell what he knew of the 2007 electoral fraud, which he blamed on then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Jose Miguel, and which he said was intended to ensure that the opposition senatorial slate, which included now President Benigno Aquino III, would not get a single vote in Maguindanao.
Roque said Ampatuan’s offer to be a whistleblower, both in the case filed over the massacre and the electoral fraud that happened in Maguindanao province in 2007, are “part and parcel of a well-orchestrated plan for his freedom.”