Word: aquinos
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...more than 400 of days, the Philippines had been on edge, waiting for what could be a major turning point in its political history. The Agrava board, a fact-finding body set up by President Ferdinand Marcos to investigate the Aug. 21, 1983, assassination of Opposition Leader Benigno Aquino within moments of his return from exile, had promised to publish the results of its hearings by the anniversary of the murder. But that day passed, and so did that week. Another week went by, then a month. Questions snowballed. Tensions mounted. A steady trickle of leaks- some careless, some calculated...
Last week the biggest leak of all emerged. The 479-page memorandum of the board's legal staff, on which the final report will be based, was shown to several foreign news organizations, including TIME. The memo's conclusion was devastating: Aquino was not killed by Rolando Galman, the lone hit man whom the military accused of shooting Aquino and who was himself killed just seconds after the opposition leader. Instead, the murderer was one of two unnamed soldiers who escorted Aquino off China Airlines Flight 811 and down a metal stairway to the tarmac at Manila International...
...impugning the military, the mainstay of Marcos' power for more than a decade, the memorandum deals a powerful blow to a regime that is already embattled. Indeed, the shot that killed Aquino badly wounded the Marcos government. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, silent during twelve years of martial law, began taking to the streets last year to call for an end to the President's autocratic rule. Around the country, meanwhile, the 10,000 guerrillas of the Communist New People's Army have continued to gain momentum in their 16-year struggle against the central government. That...
...well-rehearsed military account, recited by a parade of soldiers both on and off the witness stand. Last November, for example, a military sharpshooter named Rolando De Guzman testified that while sitting with a SWAT team in a parked van on the tarmac, he saw Galman shoot Aquino near by. Instantly, said De Guzman, he pumped seven bullets into the alleged assassin. Then his colleagues began firing too. Tapes, however, revealed that De Guzman's testimony took no account at all of an opening flurry of five shots, which was followed, after 17 sec. of silence, by a second...
...secretly relayed to the board last July by Celso Loterina, a Philippine Airlines ground engineer who had been standing near the nose of the China Airlines jet. During the 5 critical seconds, said Loterina, he heard the sound of running feet the metal stairway and looked up to see Aquino about four steps from the bottom. At that moment, he saw a hand appear behind the opposition leader and fire a bullet into the back of his head...