Pair killed in custody cast doubt on Philippine drug war

Two officers in deaths suspended, face trial

MANILA, Philippines — Even amid the slaughter of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, the killings of Renato and Jaypee Bertes stand out.

The Bertes men, father and son, shared a tiny, concrete room with six other people in a metropolitan Manila slum, working odd jobs when they could find them. Both smoked shabu, a cheap form of methamphetamine that has become a scourge in the Philippines. Sometimes Jaypee Bertes sold it in small amounts, relatives said. So it was unsurprising when police raided their room last month.

They were arrested and taken to a police station where, investigators say, they were severely beaten, then shot to death.

Police said the two had tried to escape by seizing an officer’s gun. But a forensic examination found that the men had been incapacitated by the beatings before they were shot; Jaypee Bertes had a broken right arm.

“There is no justification at all,” said Gwendolyn PimentelGana, a member of the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, an independent government body that investigated the case. “How can you shoot someone who is already in your custody?”

The two men are among more than 800 people who have been killed by police officers and vigilantes since the May election of Duterte, who has repeatedly called for killing drug dealers and users. Most have been killed by police officers, in encounters the police characterize as confrontations or self-defense. More than 200 have been attributed to vigilantes, who often leave cardboard signs declaring their victims to be drug pushers.

The Bertes case is one of the rare killings to prompt legal action. Two of the officers involved have been suspended, and police said they would be charged with murder.

Duterte has not commented on the case, which has been widely reported in the local news media. In a speech Wednesday, he said that police should not use excessive force, but he showed no sign of backing down from his call to kill drug suspects.

“The fight against drugs will continue unrelenting until we have destroyed the apparatus operating in the entire country,” he said.

Sen. Leila de Lima, the former Philippine secretary of justice, called the killing a “summary execution” and said the evidence was so clear-cut that authorities had “no choice” but to bring charges.

The case is one of several expected to be the focus of potentially explosive hearings next week before the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which de Lima oversees.

Duterte lashed out at de Lima in his speech Wednesday, accusing her, without providing evidence, of having an affair with her married driver, who he said collected drug payoffs for her.

De Lima called the accusation “foul” and added, “If this is his way of stopping the Senate’s investigation on the extrajudicial killings, he can try,” but she insisted that she would not call off the hearings.

Although the killings have dispensed with what Duterte has called “the rigamarole” of due process, his drug war has proved wildly popular in a country plagued by crime.

The blunt-spoken Duterte made his name as the mayor of Davao City, where vigilante killings starting in the 1980s are credited with helping reduce crime and making it one of the country’s safest places.

Since Duterte has taken his campaign nationwide, more than 600,000 drug dealers and users have turned themselves in to avoid being killed, the authorities say. The result, they say, has been a visible reduction in drug use and petty crime.

Renato Bertes, 49, and Jaypee Bertes, 28, lived with their families in a dark warren of alleyways in Pasay City, a part of greater Manila near Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The eight of them shared a small room and a kitchen area with buckets in place of a sink.

According to police, the officers chanced upon the Bertes men, out in the neighborhood gambling, on the evening of July 6. They arrested them, found small amounts of shabu in their possession and took them to the police station.

Police declined to discuss the case or release their investigative report, but that document was summarized in a report by the Commission on Human Rights, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times.

A forensic examination concluded that they had been repeatedly struck with a blunt object before their deaths.