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.