Fiscals appeal order disallowing 2 massacre witnesses

MANILA, Philippines - The prosecution panel in the three-year Maguindanao massacre trial is appealing a Quezon City judge’s order disallowing the presentation of two suspects as witnesses against their co-accused.

In an 11-page motion released to the media Friday, the prosecutors asked Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes of the Regional Trial Court Branch 221 to partially reconsider her earlier order that barred the presentation of Inspector Rex Ariel Diongon and Police Officer 1 Rainier Ebus.

They said the motion asking the court to allow the presentation of Diongon was neither interdependent nor related to a petition for review filed before the Court of Appeals (CA).

In her earlier order, Solis-Reyes said Diongon and Ebus cannot testify because of the prosecution’s petition filed before the appellate court. She said allowing their presentation would reverse her 2011 order denying the bid to discharge them from the list of the accused.

But in their appeal, the prosecutors said the judge seemed to have “fused and confused” their two motions asking for the conversion of Diongon into a state witness.

In her November 2011 order, the court “clearly impressed that (Diongon’s) discharge would be appropriate some other time” as the accused that he mentioned were still at large, said the prosecutors.

“This is now the awaited time,” they added, noting that many of the suspects identified by Diongon in his earlier testimony have already been arrested.

The prosecution panel said Diongon was the only possible witness who can positively identify some of the suspects, particularly the members of the 1507 and 1508 Provincial Police Mobile Group who were implicated in the incident.

They said allowing the presentation of Diongon would expedite the proceedings as they might decide to “make do with the presentation of the scores of its listed other witnesses.”

Fifty-eight people, including at least 32 media practitioners, died in the Nov. 23, 2009 massacre.