Four Philippine cops are found guilty by a court of killing father and son

In an uncommon instance of law enforcement personnel being tried for their involvement in former president Rodrigo Duterte’s lethal drug war, four Philippine police officers were found guilty on Tuesday of killing a father and son, according to court officials.

Judge Rowena Alejandria of the Manila Regional Trial Court read a written conviction for the four low-ranking officers on Tuesday. The verdict stemmed from the shooting deaths of two victims at a Manila slum during an anti-drug police operation in 2016. The sentences ranged from one to ten years in prison.

“It must be worthy to note that the accused themselves did not deny their presence and participation in the police operation conducted, the same event where the victims Luis and Gabriel (Domingo) were killed,” Alejandria wrote.

In a campaign that became the focal point of Duterte’s 2016–2022 administration, thousands of drug suspects were slain by police and unidentified gunmen. Critics referred to this crackdown as “state-sponsored extrajudicial killings,” and the International Criminal Court is currently looking into it.

In the claustrophobic northern Manila courtroom, Luis Bonifacio’s companion, Mary Ann Domingo, sobbed on her son’s shoulder while they heard the verdict on two counts of homicide, one after the other.

The heirs of the victim also demanded that Manila police officers Virgilio Cervantes, Arnel de Guzman, Johnston Alacre, and Artemio Saguros pay damages of 300,000 pesos ($5,120) apiece.

The family claims that during the nighttime raid at the northern Manila slum community, around a dozen police officers participated.

The two were unarmed when cops opened fire, the family said, and they had no drug involvement.

The accused claimed the suspects were armed and had fired at them, and they entered a plea of self-defense.

State prosecutors, however, chose to prosecute only four police with homicide rather than murder, which is more serious and carries a longer sentence.

Official data suggests that over 6,000 people killed in police anti-narcotics operations.

But rights groups say tens of thousands of primarily poor men have been slain by officers and vigilantes, even without proof they were tied to drugs.

During anti-drug operations, Duterte had openly urged police to kill dead criminals if they felt their lives were in danger.

Only five other police officers have been found guilty of killing drug suspects, despite the fact that the crackdown has drawn widespread criticism and prompted an international investigation.

2018 saw the conviction of three Manila police officers for the 2017 murder of a 17-year-old teenager. Last year, two more drug-related police officers were convicted of killing two different people in 2016 and 2017, the latter of which was a South Korean businessman.

Attorneys claim that most families are either too afraid to find the murderers of their loved ones or lack the resources to take their case through the Philippines’ antiquated legal system.

The Philippine drug crackdown is being investigated by the International Criminal Court, which said in 2021 that it appeared “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population took place pursuant to or in furtherance of a state policy”

Only cases from before Duterte’s withdrawal of the Philippines from the ICC in 2019 are included in the examination.

Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos, has declined to assist with the ICC investigation, claiming that Manila had an operational legal system.

AFP