Judicial process may have taken quite some time, but justice has triumphed.

Snail-paced government action was the bane of the families of the victims of the 2009 Maguindanao massacre of 58 individuals who recently received the first installment of justice in what is still expected to be an excruciating wait for closure.

Aside from the 80 suspects who have eluded authorities for the past 10 years, which is already detestable, the efforts to recover the illegal assets of the clan that is vital for recompense of those aggrieved have been a source of frustration.

The court handed down sentences on eight members of the Ampatuan warlord clan and several others for the slaughter, but the failure to arrest suspects who remain at large does not end the peril on the families of the victims.

Among those still on the loose are 14 members of the powerful and influential clan. At least 50 of those who eluded authorities are police officers and soldiers, some of whom had provided close security detail for Andal Ampatuan Jr., the main suspect.

Police claim they have had difficulty locating and arresting the remaining suspects because most of them had sought refuge in rebel group strongholds.

Retired Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales took until 2017 to file a civil forfeiture case against the late Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan Sr. and his wife over their alleged unexplained wealth amounting to P54.97 million.

Forfeiture proceedings covered properties acquired in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007 amounting to P55 million.

Former presidential spokesman Harry Roque, the counsel for the families of the victims, said the forfeiture of the assets is indispensable for the payment of reparations of the victims, but he said the chances of the assets still being intact is “hoping against hope” due to Morales’ inordinate delay to act on the recovery of the perpetrator’s ill-gotten wealth.

He said the action may be the case of being too late the hero.

In 2010, Roque’s clients initiated a complaint with the Ombudsman for plunder and forfeiture of the assets.

The leisurely pace of government action is always the source of President Rody Duterte’s frustration, but the verdict on Thursday showed that the justice system in the Philippines works.

“The judicial process may have taken quite some time, but justice has triumphed, with our government, under the Duterte administration, remaining true to its obligation to fulfill the human rights of those concerned,” Undersecretary Severo Catura, Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat executive director, said.

“The mechanisms have effectively worked in the victims’ favor, and this is what human rights is all about,” he added.

Catura highlighted that not since the post-world war Nuremberg trials of 1945-49, which saw the conviction of 18 war criminals, has the world seen this large number of persons convicted by a single court.

“Even the much-vaunted International Criminal Court, in all its 17 years in existence and after having spent more than a billion dollars, has only convicted four personalities,” he said.

Still, the pace of the wheel of justice has a lot to be desired for the massacre victims’ families who continue to suffer the impact of the despicable crime that happened a decade ago.

For the families of the victims, final closure should involve restitution for the barbaric act and which the Duterte administration had vowed to fulfill.