MANILA, Philippines?Police officials were in a tizzy Monday over reports that one of the star witnesses in the Maguindanao massacre had disappeared from his quarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City.

Philippine National Police Director General Jesus Verzosa, in a press conference in the morning, said he had received reports that Senior Insp. Rex Ariel Diongon, former chief of the Maguindanao police mobile group who was manning a checkpoint not far from where 57 people were massacred on Nov. 23, had left his restricted quarters on Friday and failed to return.

?We have to check on the veracity of this report...we hope that nothing harmful has happened and we will look for him,? said Verzosa.

Verzosa said he ordered the regional director of the ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao) and the director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) to find Diongon and also account for all the massacre witnesses in the PNP?s custody.

It was not until mid-afternoon that Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera, in a separate news conference, announced that Diongon was ?in good hands.?

Devanadera said the Department of Justice looked into the matter and determined that Diongon ?was in the custody of the government.? She declined, however, to elaborate on whether he had indeed slipped away from his PNP custodians.

Verzosa said Diongon, one of four police officers taken into custody in connection with the massacre, had apparently asked permission from his handler to leave the headquarters to attend to ?personal matters.?

Later, Senior Supt. Ericsson Velasquez, chief investigator of the CIDG, told the Inquirer over the phone that he was informed that ?he (Diongon) just went to the DoJ to submit documents? but did not elaborate.

Diongon is expected to testify in court on who actually participated in the carnage allegedly instigated by Datu Unsay Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr.

?His testimony is very important,? said Devanadera, whose department has filed multiple murder charges against Ampatuan Jr.

Other members of the politically influential Ampatuan clan are facing preliminary investigation for similar charges in the worst incident of election-related violence in recent history.