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Driver of police van showed intent to kill, protesters claim


Protesters on Thursday denied police's claim that there was no intention to use the van to run over people during a demonstration against the United States on Wednesday.

In a statement, national minorities alliance Sandugo said television video footage showed how the police vehicle ran forwards and backward to sweep through protesters with a manifest “intent to kill or injure.”

 

 

The vehicle was driven by PO3 Franklin Kho, one of the policemen under the supervision of Senior Supt. Marcelino Pedrozo, Deputy Director for Operations of the Manila Police District, who reportedly ordered the violent dispersal.

“If we carefully review the video footages, we can hear Pedroza actually ordering his men to go after the protesters to save face from the US Embassy,” Jerome Succor Aba, national spokesperson of Suara Bangsamoro, said in a news briefing.

"We are almost at the end of our program in front of the US embassy when the Manila Police District-PNP, shot cannisters of tear gas and began the dispersal. They even went as far as brutally ramming the police mobil to the protesters hurting a number of protesters. After so much casualties, the PNP did not stop the attacks," added League of Filipino Students national spokesperson JP Rosos.

Pedrozo, however, denied ordering the dispersal and passed the blame on protesters who allegedly tried to vandalize and seize the vehicle.

The National Capital Region Police Office has already relieved Pedrozo, Kho and six other MPD officers pending investigation into the incident, which stemmed from a protest action in support of President Rodrigo Duterte's independent foreign policy by possibly breaking away from traditional ally, the US.

But the protesters were not appeased, saying the policemen involved "must be held criminally liable and denounced by the Filipino people for being traitors against their own countrymen." —NB, GMA News

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