FBI asked to conduct autopsy

FBI asked to conduct autopsy

MANILA (Reuter): The Philippines and Singapore have agreed to ask the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct an autopsy of the remains of a Filipina maid in a bizarre twist to a murder case that has rocked relations between two Asian allies.

The shipment of Delia Maga's remains to the United States will make the corpse of the domestic helper probably one of the most travelled in Philippine diplomatic history.

The decision to seek FBI help was reached in talks during the past week between Singaporean Foreign Minister Shanmugam Jayakumar and his Philippine counterpart, Roberto Romulo, said a senior diplomat who asked not to be named.

Romulo formally stepped down from his post on Sunday after being forced to resign in the wake of a bitter diplomatic row between his country and Singapore.

The row was triggered by the hanging in Singapore on March 17 of another Filipina maid, Flor Contemplacion, who had confessed to killing Maga and a Singaporean boy in Maga's care in 1991.

Although Contemplacion repeatedly confessed to the murders, many in the Philippines believe she was framed and tortured into admitting the crime.

A Singaporean pathologist who first examined Maga's remains after the murder concluded she was strangled to death, backing Singaporean police findings which pointed to Contemplacion as the killer.

After Contemplacion was hanged, Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) experts exhumed Maga's corpse from her home town cemetery where it had been lying peacefully for four years and brought it to Manila for a new examination.

They later said they found evidence Maga was severely beaten before she was strangled and suggested her killer was a man, bolstering Filipinos' belief that Singapore had hanged an innocent woman.

Singaporean experts, backed by American consultants, flew to Manila and joined the NBI in examining Maga's remains for the third time to try to break the impasse.

Both sides insisted on their previous findings.

This is where the FBI now comes in.

"If the Philippine... findings are upheld, Singapore will reopen the Flor Contemplacion case. If the panel upholds the Singapore pathologist's findings, the Philippines will abide by such a decision," the Singaporean and Philippine governments said in a joint statement on Sunday.