Manila: Forty-seven policemen joined six leaders of a powerful Filipino-Muslim family in a prison in suburban Taguig, where they will be tried for their involvement in the massacre of 57 people in the southern Philippines last year.
Forty-seven of the 50 policemen held for the crime were taken from their detention centre in Camp Crame's police headquarters in suburban Quezon City and brought to a prison facility in Bicutan, Taguig City yesterday morning, Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina, spokesman of the Philippine National Police (PNP) said in a radio report.
They were brought in two buses and escorted by 17 patrol cars, said Espina, adding the movement of the prisoners which lasted for 40 minutes, was in compliance with the order of commitment by a judge of a lower court in suburban Quezon City.
However, three of the policemen were not brought to the detention centre because they opted to become state witnesses, said Espina.
Meanwhile, five members of the Ampatuan clan were billeted at the five-storey prison facility before midnight on Friday.
Andal Ampatuan Senior, former governor of Maguindanao, his sons Zaldy Ampatuan, former governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), his two other children Anwar and Sajid, and nephew Akmad were brought from southern Philippines to Manila by a C-130 plane.
Ampatuan Senior was detained in a hospital in Camp Panacan in Davao City, in the south.
