Court orders turnover of missing slugs in Maguindanao massacre

A Quezon City court on Wednesday ordered the prosecution in the Maguindanao massacre case to turn over to the court the slugs that were recovered from some of the 57 victims of the grisly carnage. Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes said the slugs and metal fragments contained in five plastic sachets, being kept by medico-legal expert Chief Inspector Felino Brunia Jr., should be surrendered so they could be subjected under a ballistics examination. The judge learned about the "missing slugs" after Brunia admitted during Wednesday's hearing that he had forgotten to turn over the slugs he extracted from the 14 bodies he autopsied from Nov. 25 to 26, 2009. He said it was only recently that he realized that the slugs were still in his possession after opening one of his drawers in his cubicle at the Philippine National Police's Crime Laboratory office at Camp Crame. He said he was searching for the supposed submission slip for the said items inside the drawer when he discovered that the slugs have not been submitted to the court yet. Senior State Prosecutor Richard Anthony Fadullon said after Wednesday's hearing that the incident would not have any bearing on the case. "The scope of an autopsy does not involve whether or not the slugs have been turned over or not. Even if he forgot to do so, it does not have any effect on the results of the autopsy he conducted," he said. According to the court, the slugs need to undergo ballistics examination to determine the firearms used in the massacre. Subpoena Meanwhile, Fadullon also asked Solis-Reyes to issue a subpoena against Dr. Ricardo Rodaje, a regional medico-legal expert of the National Bureau of Investigation in Mindanao. Rodaje autopsied the remains of Genalin Mangudadatu, wife of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu. Genalin, her two sisters-in-law, and 54 others were brutally killed on a hilly portion of Ampatuan town on Nov. 23, 2009 in what is regarded as the worst single-day election-related violence in Philippine history. The victims were on their way to Shariff Aguak to file the candidacy papers of Mangudadatu, who was then vice mayor of Buluan town. The medical expert had appeared in the same court in January last year, wherein he claimed that the female victim he autopsied "suffered the most painful death" based on the 17 gunshot wounds she sustained. A total of 197 individuals are facing 57 counts of murder stemming from the massacre. More than 80 have already been arrested, while more than 110 have yet to be captured. Among the people accused in the high-profile case are prominent members of the Ampatuan clan — an influential family in Mindanao that has political dominance in Maguindanao. - KBK, GMA News