Saturday, June 07, 2008 Slain lawyer’s phone to be placed under ‘intense forensic exam’
TO SPEED up the retrieval of text messages sent and received by the late lawyer Richard Sison, an operative from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) 7 will bring the cellular phone to its central office “for intense forensic examination.”
Task Force Sison held a case conference at the Cebu City Police Office (CCPO) yesterday and they agreed to send Sison’s phone to the Anti-Transnational Crimes Division (ATCD) of CIDG in Camp Crame to further obtain information from Sison’s Subscriber Identity Module card.
The ATCD is the main unit of the Computer Crimes Section of the CIDG.
Supt. Rex Derilo of the CIDG 7 said only their central office can obtain information, such as text messages that have already been deleted.
CCPO Director Patrocinio Comendador said they can also tap telecommunication companies if they fail to retrieve the messages, but this will take time.
Comendador said they are coordinating with other persons to contact someone who reportedly has video footage of the shooting. He said the person is “hesitant” (to give police a copy of the footage) and is “not in Cebu right now.”
The footage reportedly caught the face of the gunman and the motorcycle’s plate number.
Comendador said they can use software to enhance the images of the footage if these aren’t clear.
Because of the many cases that Sison handled, Comendador said there were no big developments since the task force’s last meeting.
Asked if there was no plan to file a case against those who failed to immediately turn over Sison’s cellular phone, he said they can’t do that unless they can establish that lawyer Vincent Joseph Lim deleted some of the messages.
It was Lim who turned over Sison’s cellular phone to authorities three days after the shooting. (MEA)
