MANILA: A Philippine court Thursday convicted three police officers for the murder of a 17-year-old boy and sentenced them each to up to 40 years in prison, in the first such conviction in a wave of killings prompted by President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
Nearly 5,000 people are thought to have been killed by the police, and many more by unofficial militias, since Duterte swore during his 2016 presidential campaign that he would hunt down drug sellers and users and “dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish there.”
But until now, the rampant killing has taken place in an atmosphere of impunity, with Duterte insisting that he would pardon any officers found guilty of murder while carrying out his crackdown. For the first time, his vow will be tested.
“The use of unnecessary force or wanton violence is not justified when the fulfilment of their duty as law enforcers can be affected otherwise,” the judge in the case, Rodolfo Azucena Jr., said in his ruling Thursday. He said a “shoot first and think later attitude” could never be justified.
The dead boy at the center of the case, Kian Loyd delos Santos, was incorrectly identified by an informant as a drug pusher, prosecutors said.
Witnesses had described seeing delos Santos being led away by the officers in August 2017 and shot at close range, his body found slumped near a pigsty some 100 yards away. A neighbourhood video camera caught the police officers pulling the subdued boy along minutes before he was found dead.
That contradicted statements by the police officers, who said the boy had pulled a gun and set off a shoot-out that led to his death. But forensic evidence also showed that he had been shot while in a fetal position.
The officers — Arnel Oares, Jeremias Pereda and Jerwin Cruz — were brought to a lower court in Caloocan City, just north of Manila, under tight security. Police officers in full battle gear escorted them in a convoy that snaked through Manila’s congested streets.
A large crowd of journalists were barred from entering the packed courthouse, where Azucena declared that the three officers would serve their sentences without possibility of parole.
Delos Santos’s mother, Lorenza delos Santos, said she was relieved that the court had convicted her son’s killers, and stressed that the ruling also exonerated him from accusations that he had been involved in the drug trade.
“I am very happy because this is a proof that my son is innocent,” she said as she emerged from the court. She expressed hope that police officers involved in similar incidents would now live in fear of being punished.
The teenager’s death, in August, ignited public anger. During his funeral procession, the Catholic Church and human rights activists led a demonstration to denounce Duterte’s drug war.
Two other teenagers were killed under similar circumstances after delos Santos’ death, and Duterte later declared a brief moratorium on police drug raids. The president also met with the boy’s parents and promised them that justice would be served.
The government prosecutor in the case, Persida Acosta, said that the ruling should serve as a warning to other police officers accused of excesses in carrying out their mandate. “Why kill a child while kneeling down? Why kill a person who is already incapacitated?” she said. “You cannot say that Kian pulled a gun on the officers. That is very clear.”
But she also appeared to try to limit the ruling’s wider impact, saying that while the case proved that the three police officers were guilty, it did not mean that extrajudicial killings had occurred more broadly in Duterte’s drug war.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch welcomed the ruling as the “first conviction of state agents implicated in a drug war killing.”
“This is a triumph of justice and accountability and a warning to members of the Philippine National Police to respect due process of civilians as they do their job,” Brad Adams, the Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
But Adams also noted that Duterte had repeatedly promised to pardon police officers.
“There is reason to suspect that he will keep that promise,” the statement said. “That is why it remains important that the government create an independent commission to investigate these killings.”
Duterte in October said that he had reason to believe the account of the officers in delos Santos’ case, even as he appeared to say they had gone too far.
“The case of Kian, that student, you will know the truth,” Duterte said in October. “At least the version of the police, in the trial. But it will not excuse or justify killing a person whose hands are raised, ready to surrender or kneeling down, because that is really murder.”
— New York Times News Service
