The men at a swanky Manila hotel were talking and laughing like they were organising a picnic but what they had in mind was murder.
Four months later, 58 men and women would be slaughtered in the most savage way on a deserted hill at the end of a rutted track in a fringe village in the war-ravaged, southern province of Maguindanao.
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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on December 22, 2019, with the headline 'Kill them all': How one politician ordered the Philippines' worst political massacre. Subscribe