MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Authorities will file on Monday criminal charges against three Moro siblings who slaughtered their 56-year-old mother and ate her internal organs raw in a bizarre incident in Ampatuan town in the province.
The suspects, Dante Amil, 35, and his younger brothers, Paroy, 21, and Ibrahim, 18, voluntarily yielded when responding barangay officials arrived at their farm to arrest them last Wednesday, hours after they mercilessly killed their mother.
Senior Inspector Ronald De Leon, chief of the Ampatuan municipal police, said they will file appropriate criminal cases against the culprits.
Neighbors said the three men could be under the influence of drugs when they hogtied their mother, Akrima (also known as Musala) Amil, and butchered her using machetes.
The suspects ate parts of the victim’s body raw, according to investigators and personnel of the municipal health office.
Local officials said superstitious elders in the municipality believed the suspects were possessed by evil spirits. They had been subjected to rituals by a local shaman, investigators said.
Superstitions are strictly forbidden in Islam.
All three suspects reside in a family farm at Purok Nabadtog in Barangay Kamasi in Ampatuan, which is a predominantly Moro town in the second district of the province.
Community leaders in Barangay Kamasi said the three men did not have any criminal record in the barangay government, until they killed their mother and feasted on parts of her body as if they were wild animals.
Anwar Emblawa, an incumbent municipal councilor from the nearby Datu Abdullah Sangki town, which is adjacent to Ampatuan, said the suspects are identified with a clan in Barangay Dasikil, also in Ampatuan, which is known in an old folklore for its being a 'haven' of ghouls.
“There is an old story about a curse and these three men, according to local folks, belong to a family from a cursed ancestry, from where came these ghouls. For me, being a Muslim that is superstition and I don’t believe in that,†said Emblawa, who is related to most datus and traditional community leaders in Ampatuan.
Senior members of the Ampatuan municipal peace and order council said the local police also held for questioning the patriarch of the three suspects.