On Feb. 13 last year, members of the police Drug Enforcement Unit in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan conducted a drug sting in the city. They apprehended six suspects, who were shot dead days later in what the police claimed was an armed encounter.
A probe conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation, however, showed that the six just happened to be walking past the house where the drug sting was being staged. The six were rounded up by the cops, hogtied, blindfolded and detained at a police station. Days later, they were brought to a secluded area and shot dead, according to the NBI. The police presented guns and drugs to make it appear that the six had shot it out and resisted arrest or “nanlaban.”
The only positive development in this atrocity is that seven of the policemen were charged with six counts of murder and arbitrary detention and were dismissed from the Philippine National Police in June this year. Fifteen others, who participated in the drug sting but not the summary execution, were also dismissed from the service for planting the guns and drugs, according to PNP chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, who signed the dismissal orders.
Indicted for murder and arbitrary detention were dismissed staff sergeants Benjie Enconado and Irwin Joy Yuson; corporals Marlon Martus, Edmund Catubay Jr., Harvy Albino and Herbert Hernaded, and patrolman Rusco Virnar Madla. The police chief of San Jose del Monte at the time, Lt. Col. Gil Domingo, was suspended for six months for command responsibility.
Officials have said the case shows that the justice system in the country is working. Dismissal from the service and criminal indictments, however, aren’t enough; the next step in the search for justice for the victims is the prosecution and punishment of the guilty. Arrest warrants have yet to be issued by the court against the six dismissed policemen.
While the progress in this case is laudable, there are still so many other suspected cases of summary executions in the conduct of the war on drugs. Possible cases of injustice and abuse of state power must be pursued with the same zeal, and brought to a satisfactory conclusion.