'They didn't kill Ninoy'

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The chaplain of the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa has defended the presidential pardon extended to the 10 soldiers convicted of murdering opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.

Msgr. Robert Olaguer, who was the spiritual adviser of the convicted soldiers since 1990, assailed the public denunciation of the pardon by Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and his sister, Kris.

Olaguer disclosed that the late Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, one of former President Cory Aquino’s closes allies, has sent him on a personal mission to look for answers from the convicted soldiers regarding Ninoy’s death.

Sin assigned him to be the chaplain of the new Bilibid Prisons on Nov. 29, 1990, about five months after the convicted soldiers were transferred to the state prison.

He said Ninoy and Kris should talk to him and the freed soldiers “so that they may be guided on what is false and what is true.”

He advised the Aquino siblings to work for the reinvestigation of the case to clear up what he said were the Aquino family’s “misconceptions” about Ninoy’s murder.

Olaguer said it might help for the Aquino siblings to talk to their uncle, businessman Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco.

He noted that Pablo Martinez, the only one of the convicted soldiers to have admitted participating in the plot to assassinate Ninoy, pointed to Cojuangco as the alleged mastermind.

Olaguer said it hurt him to read the 10 soldiers—who were freed last Wednesday after serving 26 years of their double life sentence—described in the media as Ninoy’s killers.

“They deserved to be freed. Those soldiers who were incarcerated for 26 years have suffered long enough. They should not have been in jail in the first place,” Olaguer said.

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