Medical Doctors Must Link Perpetrators to Documented Signs of Torture

In the Philippines where cases of torture are dismissed by fiscals for insufficient evidence linking the perpetrators to the crime, Dr. Benito E. Molino, a forensic expert who has been documenting alleged cases of torture for more than 20 years called on his fellow doctors not just to document torture as torture but to link the documented injuries to the alleged perpetrators.

Dr. Molino cited the case in San Fernando, in the province of Pampanga where the fiscal, who even witnessed the wanton disregard of the alleged perpetrator to human rights when he uttered "I am not afraid of human rights, there is no human rights for me.", in his office against his accusers Lenin Salas and four others dismissed the case of torture filed by Salas et al for insufficient evidence. In this case, the injuries were properly and thoroughly documented that in fact torture happenned inside the police headquartes.

With this incident, Dr. Molino has a fear that the same decision might be repeated in the recent case of torture in Basilan in Southern Philippines where the burn victim, Abdul-khan Ajid can recognize two of his perpetrators only if they will be shown to him. The victim aside from suffering first to second degree burns from his buttocks to his head also sustained multiple abrasions, lacerations and contussions.

To strengthen the linkage of perpetrators to the crime of torture, Dr. Molino called on to his fellow medical doctors to be an instrument of justice. "We should not just document torture, if we have evidence to probe that an injury or injuries was/were inflicted by an alleged perpetrator then we have to link the perpetrator to the injury or injuries", he said.