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2 guns that changed Philippine history rusting away

Rusting away in a musty chamber of a courthouse is the gun believed to have triggered the upheaval that altered Philippine history.

If the military’s account of the Philippines’ crime of the century were true, it was the same weapon that fired the fatal bullet into the head of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. 24 years ago on Tuesday at the Manila International Airport on his return from self-exile in the United States.

The charcoal-toned Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum pistol, with a grip made of deer horn, was discovered a few meters away from the body of the Aquino’s alleged assassin, Rolando Galman, the “man in blue.”

It had supposedly slipped from Galman’s right hand after the soldiers, who acted as Aquino’s escorts on his homecoming that fateful Sunday afternoon, gunned him down in retaliation.
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