Duterte’s office denies police were paid bounties for killing drug suspects
Nearly 9,000 people have been killed since Duterte took office; now, two officers say most of the killing is done by the police, Duterte says they are ‘living movie scenes’
Manila — On Thursday, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s office rejected allegations by two senior police officers in a Reuters report that police received cash rewards for executing drug suspects, while the most high-profile critic of the president backed the officers’ claims. "There is no truth in the allegation that there is a co-ordinated effort to kill drug suspects," the president’s office said on Thursday in a written reply to questions from Reuters. "The so-called officers interviewed must be living movie scenes." Leila de Lima, who was arrested in February on drug charges after leading a senate probe into Duterte’s drug war, said that the allegations by the two officers had revealed "the ugly and disturbing truth of what has become" of the Philippines police. De Lima, who says she is the target of a vendetta, made the comments in a hand-written note from detention inside national police headquarters. In a Reuters report published on Tuesday, the two officers, who spoke ...
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