MANILA, Philippines?(UPDATE) Former lawmaker Didagen Dilangalen was part of a ?happy? post-massacre meeting of the Ampatuan clan, said the first witness in the trial of a powerful political family for the massacre of 57 people last November.

Lakmudin Saliao, a house helper of the Ampatuans, said that on November 24, the clan meeting presided by patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr. at their Sharif Aguak farm discussed ?kung papano ilalabas si Junior (how to slip Ampatuan Jr. out of the country).?

?Masaya at natuloy ang plano (Happy that the plan pushed through),? Saliao quoted the older Ampatuan as saying.

The Ampatuan patriarch was also happy that the Arroyo administration gave the assurance that the former president would take the younger Ampatuan in her custody.

Aside from Dilangalen, a member of the Ampatuan clan, Ampatuan Jr., and lawyer Cynthia Sayadi, and other supporters also attended the meeting.

Ampatuan Hr, and more than 100 gunmen allegedly stopped a convoy belonging to a political rival, then Buluan vice mayor and now Maguindanao Governor Ismael ?Toto? Mangudadatu, in the southern Philippines in November last year, killed 57 people and pushed the bodies into mass graves the suspects had dug beforehand.

Ampatuan, wearing a yellow prison shirt and flanked by plainclothes police, sat impassively behind his lawyers as the witness was sworn in.

The trial, held at a special courtroom built inside a maximum-security police jail in Taguig, south of Manila, is being held amid allegations of witness intimidation and fears the case could drag on for years.

Rights groups and the victims' relatives have accused the Ampatuans of applying delaying tactics while ordering their men to terrorize witnesses.

Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia chief of the New York-based monitor Human Rights Watch, said five people with knowledge of alleged abuses by the Ampatuans had been killed since the massacre.

The five included a key massacre witness who could have placed Ampatuan at the scene, she said.

"Abuses in Maguindanao have not stopped with the arrest of six members of the Ampatuan family," Pearson said in a statement.

"Prompt investigation of ongoing crimes is essential to prevent further killing and to stop suspects from interfering with the trial."

At least 30 journalists were among those shot dead in the massacre in Maguindanao province in the single biggest attack on the working press in history, according to global press watchdogs.

Five other Ampatuans, including the patriarch Andal Ampatuan Sr., are among the 196 people facing charges related to the massacre, although more than 100 of the alleged gunmen remain at large.

Ampatuan Jr., then a local mayor, allegedly led the massacre to stop the rival from running against him for the post of Maguindanao province governor in this year's national elections.