Duterte wants 1,700 freed inmates locked up

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Wednesday 1,700 convicts who were freed early for good behaviour should be sent back to prison ater questions were raised over the legality of their release.

Duterte told a news conference the 1,700 inmates, some of them imprisoned for rape and murder, had 15 days to surrender or they would be considered fugitives.

“If I were you, I would surrender to the nearest police or military detachment wherever you are now,” Duterte said, adding he would offer a bounty for inmates who failed to do so. “I will place 1 million pesos ($19,065) per head, dead or alive,” he said.

Duterte demanded the resignation of his prisons chief, accusing him of disobeying an order not to release inmates convicted of heinous crimes. A 2014 law allows for prisoners to be released early for good behaviour.

Close to 2,000 inmates serving a life sentence have been freed under the 2014 law, Senator Franklin Drilon said on Sunday, but their release orders were invalid because they were not approved by the Department of Justice Secretary.

Meanwhile, a total of 391 police officers and men still in active service have been included in the watchlist of Duterte of those involved in illegal drugs despite the unabated and bloody war to rid the country of this “menace,” according to the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP).

General Oscar Albayalde told a media briefing that the 391 were among the total of 854 retired and incumbent PNP members being investigated for their involvement in illegal drugs.

But Albayalde also pointed out that in the PNP’S own drug counter-intelligence watchlist, a total of 726 “rogue” police officers and men were being investigated for illegal drugs as part of the agency’s “internal cleansing” programme.

The programme, he explained, aims to rid the PNP of “bad eggs” and “scalawags” linked not only to illegal drugs but also to other high profile crimes like murder, kidnap-for-ransom and extortion.

In particular, many of those linked to illegal drugs allegedly participated in recycling huge quantities of the contraband seized during police raids for sale to the public.

And nowhere has this been more true, al bay al de said, than in the arrest on Monday of a PNP rookie while in the act of selling the illegal drug shabu (crystal meth) in a “sting operation” in suburban Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila.

Albayalde presented to media the arrested lawman, identified as Patrolman Leo Valdez, on Tuesday together with four sachets of shabu worth $20 he was to sell to a colleague posing as a buyer.

Coinciding with the media presentation was also a surveillance video showing Valdez sniffing shabu apparently inside drug den in Muntinlupa where he was also allegedly involved in the illegal drugs trade.

“Look at your image, it’s gone viral. Look at yourself, you have no shame at all,” a visibly irate Albayalde shouted at Valdez in Filipino in the presence of top police officers and members of media.

But what apparently enraged the PNP chief the more was when he learned that based on his records, Valdez joined the police in 2007 only to be dismissed in 2014 ater he went Awol (absent without official leave) for illegal drugs.

The same records showed that three years later on 20017, Valdez was reinstated and was asssigned to PNP Metro Manila regional command, especiially with the Regional Mobile Force Batalion. much to the surprise of Albayalde who asked him in Filipino: “Who reinstated you? To whom did you appeal?”

Al bay al de’ s question was also the same question raised by concerned senior PNP officers who cited the urgent need to implement especially reforms in the recruitment and screening processes for those joining the police to minimise the entry of “misfits” and “scalawags.”

Also on Wednesday, Duterte said that while he was not a fan of online gambling he was unwilling to ban the business, as China has called for, because of the harm that would do to the country’s economy.

Duterte, who backed the Philippine gaming regulator’s move in late 2016 to licence internet gambling, said on Wednesday he would not have allowed this “stupid activity” if there were plenty of jobs available. “We decide to benefit the interest of my country. I decide that we need it,” Duterte said in a televised news conference, but gave a stern warning to online gambling operators not to avoid paying their fees.

Filipino leader says that some of them imprisoned for rape and murder, had 15 days to surrender or they would be considered fugitives; China’s call for Philippines to ban online gambling rejected