Who Ordered Ninoy Killed?

BY
RODEL RODIS
AUGUST 14, 2008POSTED IN: TELL TALE SIGNS

After 25 years, the question still remains unanswered: Who ordered the assassination of former Senator Benigno
Ninoy Aquino on August 21, 1983?
I previously wrote that Ferdinand Marcos was the mastermind because the military precision of the assassination could
not have occurred without the knowledge and involvement of Gen. Fabian Ver, who would not have done anything
without the Dictators knowledge and approval.
But could someone else have been the actual mastermind? Lets review the facts. Ninoy Aquinos plane had just
landed in Manila on August 21, 1983, on a flight from Taipei when Philippine soldiers entered the plane, approached
Ninoy and placed him under their custody and control. The soldiers hustled him through the crowded aisle and out the
airport door, which they immediately shut to prevent anyone from following them, to a staircase. A few seconds later,
shots were fired and Ninoys lifeless body lay on the concrete tarmac of the Manila International Airport. About 16
soldiers (no officers!) were charged with conspiring to kill Ninoy. The forensic evidence submitted to the trial court,
columnist Antonio Abaya wrote, established that the trajectory of the fatal bullet was forward, downward and
medially, the bullet entering Aquinos skull near his left ear and exiting at his chin. This was consistent with the gun
being fired at Aquino by someone behind him who was at a higher plane than he was, such as someone who was one
or two steps behind him on a downward flight of stairs.Rolando Galman, the hapless patsy brought by his military
handlers through tight security at the airport, was positioned at the foot of the staircase. After Aquino was shot once
from behind, the soldiers pointed their assault rifles at Galman and shot him several times to make sure he was dead.
After a military van appeared on the tarmac, soldiers quickly loaded the bodies of both Aquino and Galman into the
van that drove them to a military camp. Several hours passed before the corpses were delivered to a coroner for
examination. Barely eight hours later, Marcos announced to the world that communist hit man Rolando Galman had
killed Ninoy Aquino.

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Ninoys Faith
***************************But no one believed Marcos. A fact-finding commission Marcos formed in response to world
outrage determined that 16 soldiers were responsible, and they were so charged before a trial court. After the 16
soldiers were convicted of conspiracy in the killing of Ninoy and sentenced to Muntinglupa penitentiary, one of them,
M/Sgt Pablo Martinez, became a born-again Christian and decided to confess and reveal what the other soldiers would
not. In his affidavit, Martinez declared that he was assigned by Col. Romeo Ochoco, then-deputy commander of the
Aviation Security Command (Avsecom); Brig. Gen. Romeo Gatan of the Philippine Constabulary; and Herminio Gosuico,
a civilian businessman from Nueva Ecija, to escort Galman from a hotel near the airport to the tarmac for the Ninoys
arrival from Taipei.

Witnesses at the Agrava Fact-Finding Commission had previously identified Gosuico, Air Force Col. Arturo Custodio and
two others as the men who fetched Galman from his home in San Miguel, Bulacan, on August 17, 1983. Martinez had
previously served under Col. Ochoa, who personally recruited him for the special assignment. Martinez wrote that he
and Galman were briefed on the assassination plot at the Carlston Hotel near the domestic airport on the night of
August 20, 1983. Briefing them on the details of the plot were Gen. Gatan, Col. Ochoco and Gosuico. That evening, Col.
Ochoco gave Galman a .357 Magnum revolver, while Martinez was given a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. On the
morning of August 21, 1983, just before Martinez brought Galman to the airport, Galmans mistress, Anna Oliva, and
her sister Catherine, were brought to the Carlston Hotel to have breakfast with Galman. The two women were last seen
at their workplace on September 4, 1983, when armed men picked them up. Their corpses were later exhumed from a
sugarcane field in Capas, Tarlac, in 1988 in a hacienda reportedly owned by Danding Cojuangco. Galmans wife, Lina
Lazaro, was picked up at her home by two men on January 29, 1984, and was never seen again. During the Agrava
Fact-Finding inquiry, Gosuico was identified by Galmans son and step-daughter as one of the two men who picked up
their mother. Gosuico was a known business associate of Danding Cojuangco. Despite all the testimonies implicating
them, neither Col. Ochoco, nor Gen. Gatan nor Gosuico were ever charged with involvement in the conspiracy to kill
Ninoy. Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyos current Justice Secretary, Raul Gonzalez, was a Sandiganbayan prosecutor
under President Cory Aquino when he came upon a witness with crucial evidence who was willing to testify under
certain conditions. Gonzalez went to Cory in Malacanang to tell her that the witness wanted protection for herself and
her three kids. Before Cory would agree to the terms, she asked who the witness would name as the mastermind.
When Gonzalez answered that she would name her first cousin, Pres. Cory reportedly responded, Impossible! It
cannot be! She refused the demand of the witness who eventually disappeared. Gen. Romeo Gatan died of a heart
ailment at an unspecified date. Hermie Gosuico died under mysterious circumstances leading Abaya to ask: Did he
die of illness or accident, or was he eliminated because he knew too much? Of the original conspirators named by
Martinez, only Col. Ochoco is still alive, reportedly living with family somewhere in Stockton, Calif. A documentary on
the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, prepared by the Foundation for Worldwide People Power, will be shown on Thursday,
August 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Veterans War Memorial (400 Van Ness Avenue) in San Francisco sponsored by the Ninoy
Aquino Movement (NAM). Youre invited. Before the showing, you are also invited to a Candlelight Vigil and March at 6
p.m. at the steps of the San Francisco City Hall. http://www.asianweek.com/2008/08/14/who-ordered-ninoykilled/
InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
1. Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. went by an alias, "Marcial Bonifacio", on his flight home. Wanting to return to the Philippines after
his heart operation in the United States, his petition for passport renewal was denied. So, he flew to Singapore and applied for a tourist
visa at the Chinese Embassy under that pseudonym.
2. The military created OPLAN BALIKBAYAN supposedly to secure Aquino upon his arrival at the Manila International Airport. More
than a thousand military officers and men were involved in the scheme, which would see him escorted from MIA to Fort Bonifacio,
where he would be detained. Three phases were involved in the plan: first, the plane would be secured upon landing; second, security
at the International Passenger Terminal would be tightened; and third, the welcoming crowd would be contained.
3. Aquino was shot below his left ear, with the bullet exiting through his lower jaw. The characteristics of the wound of entrance
indicated that the person who shot him fired at close range.
4. After he was shot, Aquino was thrust "as though he were a sack of rice" into a SWAT van waiting on the tarmac so he could be
brought to the hospital. It was probably here that he was struck on the top of the head "with a blunt instrument, possibly the butt of a
gun," therefore fracturing his skull. The Sandiganbayan concluded that this was done to make sure he would not survive.

5. Aquino died of "brain laceration and intracranial hemorrhage", according to the autopsy performed less than 10 hours after the
incident by Dr. Bienvenido Munoz of the National Bureau of Investigation. Munoz would initially say that the bullet was directed
"forward, downward, and medially," but would later do a 180-degree turn upon being cross-examined by the defense at the retrial of the
murder, and say that the bullet was actually directed "upward, downward, and medially." The latter statement would seem to support the
defense's stand that it was Rolando Galman, standing on the tarmac and pointing upward, who shot Aquino, and not one of Aquino's
military escorts as they were descending from the plane.
6. In December 1985, the First Division of the Sandiganbayan, under pressure from the Office of the President, acquitted all 26 accused
when it heard the murder case for the first time. The prosecution then petitioned the Supreme Court to review the decision. The court
ordered a retrial, saying the first decision was made "with grave and serious infirmities." It was in 1987 when the retrial began.
7. Pelagia Hilario and Lydia Morata, Aquino's co-passengers who "playfully kissed him" on the plane and presumably the ones
usually shown on video recordings of the events prior to the assassination doing the same will later say that they saw Aquino
walking on the tarmac before he was shot in the back of the head, a testimony in favor of the accused military officers. Two other
civilians will attest the same. But the testimony of another passenger, "Crying Lady" Rebecca Quijano, would prove more compelling:
she said she saw one of the soldier-escorts shoot Aquino as he descended the bridge stairs.
8. C1C Rogelio Moreno was the man who shot Aquino, according to witnesses, as from their positions they saw the man directly behind
the Senator shoot him in the nape. Moreno was among Aquino's military escorts, part of the boarding party tasked to secure Aquino and
lead him to a vehicle on the way to Fort Bonifacio, where he was to be detained.
9. The trajectory of the fatal bullet, the inconsistencies in the testimonies of the accused, and the fact that Aquino's escorts fled as soon
as he was shot, were some of the evidence that disproved the defense's position that it was Rolando Galman, from the tarmac, who
killed Aquino.
10. The final Sandiganbayan ruling on the murder quotes Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. Describing Aquino's fall as he was shot at the
back of the head, the decision uses lines from the play: "O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then you, and I, and all of us fell
down, Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us."