Did Ninoy Aquino Plot His Own Assassination?
Recent performance and decisions on critical national events by incumbent president Benigno Aquino Jr. puts the credibility of the whole Aquino clan in question. But are the netizens correct to doubt the acts of assassinated ex-senator Benigno Aquino Sr?
Recent performance and decisions on critical national events by incumbent president Benigno Aquino Jr. puts the credibility of the whole Aquino clan in question. But are the netizens correct to doubt the acts of assassinated ex-senator Benigno Aquino Sr?
This video has been circulated in Facebook with a caption that read, Ninoy Aquino knew how and where he will be killed. Furthermore, the YouTube up-loader claimed that Ninoy was the mastermind of his own assassination in order to pin the blame on the Marcos administration.
This article does not aim to corroborate nor dispute this allegation. I tried to collate all the information I could regarding the circumstances surrounding Ninoy Aquino's death. It will be up to you readers to decide on the truth you want to believe.
The video snippet mentioned above was part of a film documentary made by American writer and filmmaker Tom Coffman entitled Ninoy Aquino & The Rise of People Power which was released straight to DVD on November 18, 2010. He specializes in Asia-Pacific historic events as they relate to American history specifically Hawaii. Ninoy Aquino & The Rise of People Power is his only work relating to the Philippines.
In the film, Tom Coffman traced the rise of Ninoy Aquino from being a young pariah due to his father's involvement with the Japanese during their occupation of the Philippines, to his stint as a reporter covering the Korean war, and eventual rise in the Philippine political arena.We are also painted a picture of the Philippines during the Marcos administration.
Aquino's popularity and gift of gab which made him a favorite among the Filipino people became his downfall. His success in initiating dialogue with the rebels of the mountains of Luzon which eventually led to its most renowned peasant member, Luis Taruc's surrender, labeled him a communist during the Marcos administration. His constant criticism of corruption in the rungs of power and clamoring for land reform and social equality made him a target.
When Martial Law was declared in 1972, he was among the first groups of political prisoners. He was accused and found guilty of murder, subversion and illegal possession of firearms and explosives. He was sentenced to death by firing squad by a military tribunal. However the sentence was never carried out. Ninoy Aquino was imprisoned for seven years in a room where he was never allowed to see day nor night. It was a heart attack that finally forced his release and eventual exile to the United States.
Even in prison, Aquino was still Marcos' most powerful opposition. In his exile he was the loudest voice calling for the reinstatement of democracy in the Philippines. The Marcoses did their best to stop him from going back to the country. Imelda even came to visit him to warn him of the danger to his life should he ever step into Philippine soil again.
In spite of the threat to his life Ninoy Aquino never wavered in his faith that the ills of his country can be resolved peacefully as Gandhi had with his beloved India. He wanted to come back to the Philippines thinking that he could help in bringing back the power to the Filipino people by talking sense to the then ailing Marcos.
His words in his last interview, "We all have to die sometime, if it's my fate to die by an assassin's bullet then so be it. But I cannot be petrified by inaction or fear of assassination and therefore stay in a corner. I have to suffer with my people, I have to lead them because of the responsibility given to me by my people."
On August 21, 1983, Ninoy Aquino was shot dead. It was his lifeless body that finally touched the ground of his beloved country. What followed next sent waves of change that reverberated beyond the Pacific shores.
Links to YouTube Videos of Ninoy Aquino and The Rise of People Power
For a copy of the original DVD click here: Ninoy Aquino and The Rise of People Power
Investigations on the Events of August 21, 1983
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| Autopsy Report by NBI Pathologist Dr. Munoz |
Pressured by the public, then President Marcos ordered the establishment of a fact finding committee to investigate the circumstances of Aquino's death. The general public accused him, his wife Imelda Marcos and then Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian Ver to be the mastermind of the assassination plot. However no evidence nor witness ever came out to prove the guilt of the former first couple.
The first committee proposed that Ninoy Aquino's assassin was a hitman named Rolando Galman and Marcos insisted that the assassination was ordered by the leader of the then chairman of the Philippine Communist Party. In a reenactment aired through local television, Galman was shown to have hidden underneath the airplane's staircase and shot Aquino point-blank at the back of his head as he headed for the waiting military van. The hitman was then killed in a fusillade fired by the military personnel who were escorting Aquino.
Due to numerous inconsistencies and irregularities, the politicians and diplomats questioned the veracity of the said findings. Marcos was then forced to dissolve the first committee and a second one was established. The second committee was named the Agrava board as it was headed by former Court of Appeals Justice Corazon J. Agrava. The second commission took one year to finish the investigation and interviewed 193 witnesses.
The second investigation found Galman to be just another victim in the whole plot. The first hole in the plot was Galman's presence on the scene itself. The whole airport was tightly cordoned by the military and the police that not even authorized airport personnel can get inside the airport without having their identities thoroughly scrutinized. Eyewitnesses, video footage and autopsy report all corroborated that Ninoy Aquino was shot descending the stairs and not on the tarmac as indicated in the Galman angle.
The following are excerpts from the report of the Sandiganbayan ruling on the Ninoy Aquino assassination, Cases No. 10010 and 10011.
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| Report by Autopsy Observer for the Aquino Family Dr. Billote |
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| Testimony of NBI Medico Legal Dr. Cunanan during the 1987 Hearing |
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| Continuation of Dr. Cunanan's Testimony |
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| Continuation of Dr. Cunanan's Testimony |
Actual footage of the event that transpired at the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983.
Dr. Matsumi Suzuki, a Japanese Electrical Engineer who specialized in analyzing voice prints. Using advanced voice and sound recognition equipments such as the spectro-analyzer, he was able to deduce the following observations after subjecting the video footage and voice recordings to said analysis.
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| Voice Transcript 1 |
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| Voice Transcript 2 |
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| Conclusion by Dr Suzuki with Regard to Footage and Voice Recordings |
A witness put Galman to about four meters away from Ninoy Aquino during the shooting. Another witness observed Galman wearing a PAL uniform conversing with Col. Rolando Abadilla a few minutes before Aquino's shooting. The witness who observed Galman's distance from Aquino also noted that Galman smiled at the soldiers escorting Aquino indicating that he knew them.
It should also be taken into consideration that if Galman really was the shooter, and with all the military men "protecting" Aquino, shouldn't it have been easy for these military men to overpower Galman without riddling him with bullets?
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| Relative Positions of Soldiers Escorting Aquino |
Mystery of the .357 Magnum
Another point of contention in the whole case was the type of weapon used to shoot Ninoy Aquino. On Lagman's bullet riddled body, a .357 magnum was found which the preliminary fact-finding committee presumed to be the murder weapon. However based on the autopsy report and voice print analysis, it appears that the weapon couldn't have been the .357 magnum but rather a .45 or .38 caliber gun. Furthermore, netizens knowledgeable of guns observed that a .357 magnum's bullet explodes into little fragments. An exploding bullet would have completely decimated half of Aquino's head especially since the weapon was fired no more than 5 inches from his back as observed by the forensic team.
Upon further investigation, it was concluded that the .357 magnum was in fact the missing gun of Col. Octavio Alvarez. A witness observed a similar gun in the hands of Col. Abadilla's men prior to the fatal day leading the court to conclude that either the gun was planted on Galman's body after the fact or was given to him inside the airport sometime before the assassination. The second premise was due to a witness' observation of Galman's seeming "familiarity" with the military men accused.
Conclusion
Ninoy Aquino was killed in 1983 but the case was only brought into fruition in 1990. Seventeen military personnel were accused as principal perpetrators, eight military personnel as accomplices and four civilians. On September 28, 1990 sixteen defendants were convicted by the Sandiganbayan and served a Reclusion Perpetua or life sentence. The mastermind of the whole plot was never discovered to this day.
Most people believe that it was the Marcoses who ordered the hit, subsequent probings pointed to Danding Cojuangko who was a cousin to the Aquino family, recent theory claims that it was Ninoy himself who planned his assassination. Based on the evidence gathered and the court findings of the case, would Ninoy Aquino have had enough clout or connections to put such an elaborate assassination plot organized and cause it to happen to his own self? If not, who then would have enough power to keep the truth hidden to this day?
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