Defense tries to discredit prosecution witness

The drug case against the controversial shabu 11 continued yesterday with defense lawyers attempting to discredit the credibility of prosecution witness Jude Daniel Mendoza, forensic chemical examiner of the Philippine National Police crime laboratory.

Lawyer Vicente Fernandez, counsel of suspects Tao Fei and Liu Bo, contended that Mendoza, together with contemporaries at the crime laboratory, may have been invited to a seminar two months after the raid of the alleged shabu laboratory in Umapad, Mandaue City last year because one of the speakers thereat, an envoy from the United States Drug Enforcement Agency who was present during the raid, was dissatisfied with how local authorities conducted the operation.

"Is it safe to surmise that you were invited to a seminar because the agent was not satisfied with your actuation while in Umapad?" Fernandez cross-examined Mendoza in the witness stand but Judge Marilyn Yap sustained the objection of the public prosecutor.

Fernandez also asked Mendoza whether he was aware of any comments the agent made during the training with regards to how the alleged shabu laboratory was raided, to which Mendoza answered in the negative, saying the agent was "quite courteous".

Mendoza explained it was the Cebu City government who invited them to the seminar and they did not really know why exactly they were invited. He said that aside from the sophisticated equipment the speakers showed them, the topics discussed during the training were practically similar to what they have already learned.

Meanwhile, lawyer Eric Carin, counsel of Siew Kin Weng, Liew Kam Song and Bao Xia Fu grilled Mendoza on why he did not take representative samples of the bottled distilled water inside the lab, unlike what he did to the other substances like the thionyl chloride, acetone, and caustic soda.

While Mendoza reasoned there was need to take samples from a substance, which they have surely identified, Carin argued it would have been most prudent to take samples of the same.

But Mendoza admitted that the three substances he took samples of are essential chemicals that cannot, in itself, manufacture shabu. These chemicals would reportedly just compose about 25 percent of the ingredients to manufacture the regulated substance depending on the procedure employed.

Arrested during the September 24, 2005 raid include three Filipinos (two of them are Cebuanos), two Taiwanese, two Malaysians, three Chinese and a Briton of Chinese ancestry. They were all charged for manufacturing shabu, a heinous crime punishable by death in the Philippines.