{"id":7214,"date":"2022-12-15T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T00:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=7214"},"modified":"2023-02-10T16:05:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-10T15:05:42","slug":"second-war-on-drugs-conviction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/second-war-on-drugs-conviction\/","title":{"rendered":"Second \u201cwar on drugs\u201d conviction"},"content":{"rendered":"

After five years, the Regional Trial Court Branch 122 in Caloocan City convicted patrolman Jefrey Perez for torturing<\/a> 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz and 14-year-old Reynaldo \u201cKulot\u201d de Guzman in 2017. Aside from life imprisonment on two occasions, the court ordered on November 23, 2022, a removal from office and a fine of over two million pesos for each of the respective teens\u2019 families to compensate for the damages<\/a>. The second accused police officer, Rocky Arquilita, died of suspected hepatitis in prison<\/a> in 2019.<\/p>\n

Both teenagers<\/a> died after being tortured. Arnaiz died in an alleged shootout with the convicted police officers. He was accused of allegedly robbing a cab driver. However, an autopsy<\/a> revealed that Arnaiz had been handcuffed, beaten up, and then killed. The cab driver confirmed that he had been forced by the police to provide a false affidavit. The court declared true the planting of firearms with ammunitions and drugs by the police officers at Arnaiz. Guzman<\/a> was found dead weeks after Arnaiz’s death about 100 km away from the scene. Murder charges remain undecided in the two cases.<\/p>\n

“This is a warning to all law enforcers to not use excessive force against civilians,” said Persida Acosta<\/a>, head of the prosecutor’s office who is handling the case. Opposition senator, Risa Hontiveros<\/a>, stressed that the conviction showed that “torture, planted evidence, and false police reports have no place in our national police force.\u201d She also pleaded for full accountability of state violence<\/a>, stating it was the only way “the public can once again trust the institutions meant to protect them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Philippine Commission on Human Rights<\/a> also acknowledged the prosecution’s 36-page decision. The Philippine National Police underlined its respect for the court’s decision. Amnesty International Philippines, however, called the conviction “only a drop in a bucket.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The conviction in the case of Arnaiz and de Guzman is the second<\/a> in the so-called “war on drugs” after the conviction in the case of the extrajudicial killing of 17-year old Kian delos Santos in 2017 in Caloocan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Raffy Lerma<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After five years, the Regional Trial Court Branch 122 in Caloocan City convicted patrolman Jefrey Perez for torturing 19-year-old Carl Angelo Arnaiz and 14-year-old Reynaldo \u201cKulot\u201d de Guzman in 2017. Aside from life imprisonment on two occasions, the court ordered on November 23, 2022, a removal from office and a fine of over two million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":5258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,58,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-war-on-drugs-en","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7214"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7862,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7214\/revisions\/7862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}