Court finds four Philippine police guilty in drug war killings

Source: CNA

MANILA: Four Philippine policemen were found guilty Tuesday (Jun 18) of killing a father and son, court officials said, in a rare case of law enforcement officers being prosecuted for taking part in former president Rodrigo Duterte's deadly drug war.

The four low-ranking officers were all sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for the shooting deaths of the two victims at a Manila slum during an anti-drug police operation in 2016, Manila regional trial court judge Rowena Alejandria said in her written verdict that was read in court Tuesday.

"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.

Thousands of drug suspects were killed by police and unknown gunmen in a campaign that became the centrepiece of Duterte's 2016 to 2022 rule, a crackdown that critics described as state-sponsored extrajudicial killings and is now the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court.