Cops who shot, killed Laguna teen known – PNP Chief

The police officers who opened fire and killed two drug suspects in an operation in Biñan City, Laguna last June 16 have been identified, Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Gen. Guillermo Eleazar said on Wednesday.

In a statement, Eleazar said this was according to the results of the ballistics examination and the cross-matching on the slugs recovered from the bodies of 16-year-old Jhondie Helis and high-value target Antonio Dalit.

“The Regional Crime Laboratory Office (RCLO) of Police Regional Office (PRO) 4A reported that the slugs specimen taken from the cadaver of Jhondie Maglinte Helis matched with a cal. 45 gun submitted by one of the operatives with a rank of police senior master sergeant,” he said.

“A .45 caliber pistol owned by a police commissioned officer also matched a bullet recovered from Dalit’s body based on the same report of the RCLO4A,” Eleazar said.

Meanwhile, Senator Imee Marcos said the International Criminal Court (ICC) would not be free of foreign meddling if it decides to investigate President Rodrigo Duterte for his bloody war on illegal drugs.

Marcos noted that the ICC is largely European-funded at a time it is short on funding and has so far decided mostly on cases involving Africans.

“Less economically and politically powerful nations are at a disadvantage,” Marcos said.

A total of 11 firearms were submitted by the fact-finding body of the PRO 4A for ballistics examinations and cross-matching.

Both Helis and Dalit suffered two gunshot wounds based on the autopsy report of the RCLO4A. They both tested positive for gunpowder nitrates based on the paraffin test on their bodies.

Eleazar, however, said while the identities of the policemen were established, the missing part is the determination of whether or not there was indeed an exchange of gunfire between the police operatives and the two slain subjects of the police operation. Macon Araneta 

Another primary focus of the fact-finding investigation is looking into the allegation that Helis was handcuffed at the time he was shot.

“There’s a presumption of regularity in the conduct of this operation unless there are witnesses who could corroborate that there was no exchange of gunfire and that Helis was already handcuffed when he was repeatedly shot as claimed by the relatives,” Eleazar said.

He added that no witnesses have surfaced so far to substantiate the allegations.

“Our Internal Affairs Service investigators went to the house of the relatives to console their families and to ask for their statements of the incident, together with their witnesses but they refused,” Eleazar said, quoting a report from Internal Affairs Service Inspector General Alfegar Triambulo.

He also reiterated his call for relatives of Helis and Dalit and other possible witnesses to come forward and give their statements to the different investigating bodies to help uncover the truth behind the incident. 

Marcos said Filipinos would be naïve to believe that the ICC is beyond reproach, citing the way the court accepts funding and selects its judges.

She cited the Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), which identified the ICC’s major funders as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Japan, Mexico, and Australia.

Citing the AEI, she said pressure by the United States could also be applied on countries that it continues to defend militarily, despite its not being a state party to the Rome Statue that established the ICC.

“It is interesting to note that before she retired last week, former Chief Prosecutor (Fatou) Bensouda pushed to investigate President Duterte at the heels of his announcement that the suspension of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) would be extended,” Marcos said.

“Human rights issues will be deployed in pursuit of military goals,” Marcos added, citing another Washington-based think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which recommended that the Biden administration negotiate for greater military presence in the Philippines through an addendum to the VFA and greater pressure on human rights issues.

Vote trading and political favors among state parties have been “an open secret” in the selection of ICC judges, she said.

Marcos cited that when Japan ratified the Rome Statute in 2007 and became the ICC’s biggest funder, it was awarded with the selection of one of its nationals, Fumiko Saiga, as a judge despite her not having any legal experience.

“Even her replacement after she died was a Japanese diplomat with no experience as a lawyer nor a judge,” she said, citing Kuniko Ozaki’s mention in the book “Justice Denied: The Reality of the International Criminal Court.”

Marcos called on the Filipino legal community to resist any move by the ICC to take over cases of alleged human rights abuses in the Duterte government’s war on drugs.

“Foreign meddling in the Duterte case is not far-fetched. It would be an insult to every Filipino lawyer, judge and court if the ICC presumes to stand in their place, even before cases linked to the drug war undergo due process in our very own judicial system,” the senator said.