Maguindanao massacre hearing deferred as witness was ill

A Quezon City court has deferred Wednesday's hearing of the Maguindanao massacre case because an expert witness who was supposed to take the witness stand was not feeling well. Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Banch 221 in Quezon City postponed the hearing at the Quezon City Hall of Justice after being informed that prosecution witness Chief Inspector Raymond Cabling had flu. Cabling was among the seven medico-legal experts sent to Maguindanao last November 2009 to conduct an autopsy on the body of the 57 victims, including 32 journalists. Two scheduled hearings last week were likewise deferred because court employees had to attend conferences outside Metro Manila. Inspection of the crime scene Out of seven medico-legal experts, Cabling, chief of the regional police's scene of the crime operatives in ARMM, was the only one who personally inspected the crime scene. The other medico-legal experts just examined the bodies after they were already brought to the funeral parlors. Cabling went to the hilly portion of Sitio Masalay in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan town with his men to take pictures of the crime scene and retrieve the bodies of the remaining victims at the site. During the two days that he had so far taken the witness stand in the past, Cabling has so far shown in court through an overhead projector around 100 photographs he took at the crime site. Most of the photos showed the bloodied remains of the victims, and the grisly wounds they sustained from supposed gunshots. The victims, most of them belonging to an electoral convoy, were said to have been flagged down at Sitio Malating then brought to Sitio Masalay, where they were allegedly shot to death by prominent members of the powerful Ampatuan clan and its supposed militiamen. – VVP, GMA News