De Lima: Mamasapano clash an encounter, not massacre

MANILA, Philippines - Contrary to the conclusion of the Senate, the firefight in Mamasapano, Maguindanao on Jan. 25 that left 44 policemen dead was an encounter with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and not a massacre, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said yesterday.

But the Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine if the MILF committed an “overkill” and violated international humanitarian laws by summarily executing the Special Action Force (SAF) commandos.

De Lima noted the MILF also suffered 18 casualties while five civilians died in the encounter.

“Definitely, the Mamasapano incident was an encounter, no doubt about that,” De Lima said in a statement yesterday, citing the evidence gathered by the DOJ-National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) team.

“The term ‘massacre’ is a non-legal and more often emotionally loaded term. We will not confine our report to the issue of whether there was a massacre or not,” she said.

Instead, De Lima hinted their findings would determine if there was an “overkill” of the SAF commandos by the MILF fighters.

“The DOJ report will instead frame the question in terms of whether or not international humanitarian laws were violated by the MILF, resulting into the summary killing of SAF combatants who are already hors d’ combat (unable to fight). This is a more technically legal manner of framing the subject matter,” she pointed out.

De Lima was referring to violation of Republic Act 9851, which localized crimes under International Humanitarian Law.

Unlike the Senate report, which branded the incident as a massacre, De Lima said the main question to be answered by the DOJ in its report next month will be “whether the encounter resulted in the mass killing of the SAF as a justified act of self-defense by the MILF, or as an unmitigated act of unlawful violence.”

“If international humanitarian laws were violated by the MILF, or even by members of the SAF, either individually or as a group, the DOJ report will determine this,” she said.

De Lima also gave assurance the DOJ will come up with a fair and objective report amid the ongoing peace process between the government and the MILF.

“The primary mandate of the DOJ is the search for truth and justice, because only from ensuring justice can we have lasting peace. In the first place this is our motto: Peace is the work of justice,” she said.

De Lima added that possible conflicts of the DOJ report as against those of the Senate, the Board of Inquiry (BOI), as well as the MILF report on the incident, should not matter.

She said the DOJ has mandate to prosecute criminal offenses committed in relation to the incident.

“The DOJ will be true to its work. We will lay down the truth in order to serve justice to all concerned. This is the only way we will achieve peace,” she added.

Earlier, De Lima said the DOJ would evaluate the factual findings in the BOI and MILF reports.