Andal Ampatuan Sr. in a coma in hospital –legal counsel

(Updated 10:55 a.m.) Former Maguindanao provincial governor Andal Ampatuan Sr., on trial for the November 2009 Maguindanao Massacre, is in a coma after suffering a heart attack on Monday.

 

"As of midnight last night when I left NKTI [National Kidney and Transplant Institute] he was in comatose condition," Ampatuan's legal counsel, Atty. Salvador Panelo told GMA News Online.

Panelo added there has been no change so far in his medical condition.

"Since there is no message nor calls from his children from the time I left until this hour it means there has been no change in the medical status of Ampatuan, Sr.," Panelo said in a text message to GMA News Online.

 

The patriarch of the Ampatuan political clan who is on trial for the Philippines' worst political massacre is dying of liver cancer, his lawyer said earlier this month.

 

Ampatuan Sr., who is confined at a suburban Manila hospital, was told by his doctor that he had three to six months to live, Panelo had told the Agence France-Press international news agency.

 

The former governor had been in the hospital for almost two months since complaining of abdominal pains while held in his maximum security jail in the capital.

 

The murder trial of the elder Ampatuan and seven other clan members has moved excruciatingly slowly over the past five years.

 

The Ampatuans allegedly orchestrated the slaughter of 58 people in their area in November 2009, in an attempt to stop a rival clan's election challenge.

 

The victims, who included 32 journalists, some of whom were shot in their genitals, were buried in a hilltop grave using an excavator.

 

The brazenness and brutality of the crime shocked the world, prompting President Benigno Aquino, who took office in 2010, to work for a resolution of the court proceedings before he steps down from office next year.

 

But given the notoriously slow Philippine justice system, there are fears the trial will still not be completed before his term ends.

 

The Ampatuan patriarch ruled Maguindanao as governor for a decade with a private army tolerated by then president Gloria Arroyo who used his forces as a buffer against Muslim insurgents.

 

One of his sons and co-accused, Sajid Ampatuan, was released on bail in May. There are more than 100 others on trial for murder over the killings.
 

However many suspects, including Ampatuan clan members, remain at large while human rights groups and victims' relatives say witnesses are being killed or intimidated to try to sabotage the case.

 

The Philippines has long been blighted by a "culture of impunity" in which the powerful believe they can commit crimes like murder and escape unpunished. —with Agence France-Presse/ELR/KG, GMA News