Former president denies allegations she helped supply weapons to private army that murdered 57 people in 2009.

The lawsuit has forced Arroyo to fight another tough legal battle on top of the charges of election rigging [Reuters]

Relatives of some of the 57 people killed in the Philippines’ worst political massacre have filed a case against then-president Gloria Arroyo for arming and supporting the alleged murderers, their lawyer says.

The suit, filed with a Manila court on Tuesday, has been deliberately timed to raise public awareness before Wednesday’s two-year anniversary of the massacre.

At least two Arroyo allies, including a former governor of an autonomous Muslim region, are among about 100 suspects being tried on murder charges. The dead included 32 media workers, making it the worst single killing of journalists in the world.

Arroyo has denied all wrongdoing.

Government prosecutors, who are seeking $345,000 in damages, allege that leaders of the Ampatuan family, which ruled the southern province of Maguindanao, orchestrated the massacre to stop a political rival from challenging them in local elections.

“[Arroyo] enabled the Ampatuans to do what they did by arming them, by legitimising their private army, by giving them aid and by giving them political support,” said Harry Roque, a lawyer for relatives of 15 victims who filed the suit.

Tough legal battle

The case has forced Arroyo to fight another tough legal battle, after police charged her last week with conspiring to rig the 2007 senate elections.

The patriarch of the family, Andal Ampatuan Sr, was governor of Maguindanao province and a member of Arroyo’s ruling coalition at the time of the massacre.

Arroyo’s government had given the Ampatuans military hardware and allowed them to run their own private army of a few thousand men as a proxy force in the fight against a secessionist Muslim group in the southern Philippines.

Arroyo was forced to cut all ties with the Ampatuans following the murders.

The Ampatuan patriarch remains in detention and on trial over the murders, along with his son and namesake, who is accused of leading more than 100 gunmen in detaining the victims and massacring them on a secluded rural road in Maguindanao.

The trial is expected to last years and victims’ relatives have expressed growing frustration at the slow pace of the criminal proceedings.

Arroyo ‘squeezed’

One of Arroyo’s lawyers, Ferdinand Topacio, responded to the case by insisting his client had no direct link to the killings.

“We firmly believe that former president Arroyo has no responsibility for the Maguindanao massacre,” Topacio told a local news channel.

Arroyo’s legal spokesman, Raul Lambino, also said the civil suit was simply harassment, coming as the ailing ex-president had to face the vote-rigging charges.

“We consider that as the latest of a series of attempts to put the squeeze on the Arroyos,” Lambino said on a separate news channel.

Benigno Aquino, who won presidential elections last year in a landslide after vowing to fight corruption, has made pursuing Arroyo the top priority of his anti-graft campaign.

His aides have said Arroyo will likely have to face many more charges for corrupt acts she allegedly committed while she was president from 2001 to 2010.