Gov’t also asks to cover reading of Maguindanao Massacre case verdict

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security (PTFoMS) has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to allow the government's communication agencies to cover the reading of the verdict on the Maguindanao Massacre case.

The task force asked Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez to allow the Presidential Communications Operations Office, Radio Television Malacañang, the Philippine News Agency, and PTV-4 to cover and air the promulgation of judgment on December 19.

Their request followed a similar one by the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism that was backed by several news organizations.

Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Quezon City Regional Trial Court will finally issue her decision on the multiple murder case after a 9-year trial in which she heard hundreds of witnesses and studied hundreds of volumes of case records.

The promulgation of judgment will be held at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.

A total of 197 people, including 15 Ampatuans, were originally charged with murder for the massacre of 58 individuals on a hill in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao on November 23, 2009 in what is known as the Philippines' worst case of election-related violence.

Thirty-two of the victims were members of the media. The incident is also considered to be the single deadliest attack on journalists since detailed records were kept.

Around 80 of the accused are still at large, six have been cleared for insufficiency of evidence, two were discharged as state witnesses, and eight have died, including primary suspect and clan patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., who succumbed to liver cancer in 2015.

As a result, 101 people remained on trial when proceedings wrapped up last August, according to court records. — Nicole-Anne C. Lagrimas/RSJ, GMA News