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CPJ: Poor forensics may cripple massacre case


Philippine courts handling the Ampatuan massacre case will have a very tough time reaching a conclusive verdict because of the prosecution’s lack of forensic evidence, an international media watchdog warned weeks after the anniversary of the gruesome killings. The removal of bodies from the massacre crime scene in Ampatuan, Maguindanao, by responding policemen “before forensic teams could properly examine and collect evidence" will make it “impossible to reconstruct the events" in a way that will secure a rock-solid case, warned Bob Dietz, Asia program coordinator of the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a podcast on the CPJ site. “It's apparent that little care was taken at the killing ground," Dietz concluded after his team visited in August the site where more than 50 people, including 32 journalists, were killed on Nov. 23, 2009. But evidence is ‘enough’ In a phone interview with GMANews.TV on Sunday, private prosecutor Harry Roque Jr. said, “While it is true that we do not have much forensic evidence, we do have medico-legal reports." He disclosed that on Monday the prosecution is presenting DNA evidence gathered from the body of UNTV cameraman Victor Nuñez. He added that “while the forensic evidence was not very strong, we have very strong testimonial evidence." “This testimonial evidence, together with the forensic evidence that our own team was able to gather at the site — as we have been undertaking our own parallel investigation — will more than make up for the lack of forensic evidence." Roque also told GMANews.TV that “the unfortunate lack of forensic evidence, we believe, was not incidental." Forensics “to sort out" conflicting testimonies Dietz said “the scene of the crime that has almost vanished — the position of the bodies, the trajectory of the bullets." “No one will be able to determine which bullets extracted from which bodies were fired from which weapons carried by which killer," he said, adding that this was “the sort of hard forensic evidence that prosecutors will need to sort out the conflicting testimony of witnesses." He lamented that with the lack of evidence, it will also be almost impossible to come up with “the sort of conclusive verdict that the world is expecting to see at the end of the long legal process – no matter how hard the judge and the prosecutors try to achieve justice in this terrible crime." “A lot was lost in the process," he said, recalling how Police Chief Superintendent Felisimo Khu proudly told the CPJ team that the Integrated Police Operations Western Mindanao (IPO-WM) “had immediately started collecting bodies when they got to the scene." Khu is the acting director of the IPO-WM, the office that first responded to the massacre — but only after Army troops sent there began recovering the bodies buried from the site a day after the massacre. CPJ’s other recommendations The CPJ fact-finding team also urged President Benigno Aquino III and his administration to follow through on commitments to ensure justice in the Maguindanao killings. The CPJ also recommends that the police “take assertive and timely enforcement action in response to reports of intimidation and bribery of witnesses and victims’ families in the case, and arrest and prosecute all those responsible for bribes, threats, and violence." The group also wants the justice department and the courts to “consider, together with the police, the creation of rapid response teams composed of forensic and legal experts to handle all major crimes, including the murders of journalists." CPJ also wants to “devote sufficient funding for DNA forensic testing and other technology-driven investigation techniques." – MRT, GMANews.TV

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