In the Philippines, police officers arrested for kidnapping 4 tourists and demanding ransom

Four police officers assigned to the Philippine capital region have been arrested for the kidnapping for ransom of four foreign tourists, officials said Wednesday.

Two of the police officers on the motorcycles stopped a luxury car carrying three Chinese and a Malaysian over the weekend, while their cohorts of armed civilians handcuffed and dragged the four tourists into a van. Two of the Chinese managed to escape and notified authorities, police said.

The remaining prisoners were beaten by the kidnappers but released overnight after paying a ransom of 2.5 million pesos ($43,100), Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos said. Information provided by the freed tourists and images from security cameras led to the arrest of four police officers, including a police major, he said.

“I was shocked that it was police officers who were involved,” Abalos said at a news conference, where the four officers were shown handcuffed and in orange shirts. “This incident constitutes a serious attack on public trust and the fundamental values ​​of the police force.”

Police said they were looking for at least 10 other suspects who were not police officers but were involved in the kidnapping.

Police said they filed criminal complaints of kidnapping, carjacking and theft against the suspects.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte had described many members of the National Police, numbering more than 230,000 nationwide, as “rotten to the core”, despite ordering them to implement his drug crackdown that led to the killing of thousands of suspects, most of them poor.

The International Criminal Court is investigating these large-scale massacres, considering them a possible crime against humanity. Duterte and the national police chiefs who served under him had denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, although the former president publicly threatened the death of drug suspects during his presidency, which ended in 2022.