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Witness in Maguindanao massacre case missing


A police medico-legal expert who was supposed to testify in the Maguindanao massacre trial went missing after resigning from the Philippine National Police (PNP) Crime Laboratory. State prosecutor Juan Pedro Navera on Thursday informed the court hearing the case about the resignation of Dr. Tomas Dimaandal, who autopsied the remains of three of the 57 victims of the Nov. 23, 2009 carnage in Ampatuan, Maguindanao. Navera said Dimaandal’s resignation prompted them to replace him with another medico-legal expert who will just interpret the autopsy reports he prepared for the three victims — lawyer Cynthia Oquendo, her father Catalino Oquendo, and Manila Bulletin reporter Alejandro “Bong" Reblando. According to private prosecutor Nena Santos, legal counsel for Maguindanao Gov. Esmael “Toto" Mangudadatu, they were informed of Dimaandal’s resignation by the PNP Regional Office in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) late last year. She said they were told Dimaandal tendered his resignation as early as March of 2010, but they only knew about it in November last year, several months after coming up with a list of the 170 witnesses the prosecution was planning to present in court. “Hindi namin alam kung ano ang reason. It could be because of anything. Hindi naman siya kasi required to give a reason why he was resigning," Santos told reporters at the Quezon City Hall of Justice. (We don’t know the reason for his resignation. It could be because of anything. He’s not required to give a reason why he’s resigning.) Santos said they are searching for Dimaandal by virtue of a subpoena issued by Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Branch 221 in Quezon City. The subpoena was served to him in three addresses — his residence, his office at the PNP Crime Lab, and his clinic — all located in Mindanao. “Hinahanap namin siya pero hindi na siya nagpakita (We are looking for him)," Santos said, adding that Dimaandal was supposed to have taken the witness stand Thursday. Despite Dimaandal’s non-appearance, Santos allayed fears that the proceedings will be delayed anew, saying the prosecution would just skip the presentation of Dimaandal’s autopsy reports and just proceed to other witness testimonies. Proceedings were indefinitely suspended in February after Solis-Reyes was saddled with a huge number of pending motions from both camps that awaited resolution. The trial resumed August. Apart from Dimaandal, only one remaining medico-legal expert will be presented in court by the prosecution. In the last few months, the prosecution has so far presented five medico-legal experts who all elaborated on the multiple gunshots wounds that killed the victims. Facing 57 counts of murder are 196 individuals composed of prominent members of the powerful Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao, and members of their supposed private army. Flip-flop In cross examining Dr. Ricardo Rodaje, another medico-legal expert from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) who autopsied eight bodies, defense lawyer Sigfrid Fortun asked him if there was a way to measure the severity of the internal bleeding when the victims were shot. Rodaje answered in the affirmative. When Fortun asked him if there was a “protocol" being observed in the NBI to “quantify blood loss in the body," Rodaje said yes. But when the defense lawyer demanded proof for the protocol, Rodaje changed his answer and said there was no protocol. “You [Rodaje] changed your answer the second time, and you are under oath," Fortun said. Meanwhile, another defense lawyer, Andres Manuel, pointed out in his cross examination of Rodaje how the medico-legal expert committed “typographical errors" in the anatomical sketches and autopsy report he prepared, including gunshot wound sizes and his mix-up of the left and right in describing where the bullets entered and exited. “The size of gunshot wound number one indicated on the anatomical sketch did not reflect that on the autopsy report," Manuel told the court. Manuel also stressed in court that Rodaje did not conduct DNA testing of the remains and just relied on the victims’ relatives to establish their identities. Rodaje said doing such a test would be “laborious." “Personal viewing [of the remains] was already enough for us," he added. Families testify The court has agreed to the prosecution’s request to stop presenting another medico-legal expert for the meantime to give way to the testimony of private complainants to be led by Reblando’s wife, Myrna. Myrna will be among the 10 relatives of the victims who agreed to take the stand on behalf of the 47 other complainants. In an attempt to expedite the proceedings, the court had agreed to allow only a handful of relatives to testify and just let the rest to just submit judicial affidavits. Lawyer Harry Roque, legal counsel for more than a dozen of the 32 slain journalists, said the prosecution would be presenting at least three relatives of the victims on Thursday. - KBK, GMA News

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