UN report: 'Pattern' in police reports suggests cops planted evidence in drug war ops

A "pattern" found in police reports suggests police officers planted evidence in anti-drug war operations, a new report from the United Nations showed Thursday.

In a report on the human rights situation in the Philippines, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said police reports on 25 operations in which 45 persons were killed all showed that police claimed to have recovered methamphetamine (shabu) and guns from killed individuals.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found based on these reports that police "repeatedly recovered guns bearing the same serial numbers from different victims in different locations."

"OHCHR identified seven handguns with unique serial numbers. Each handgun appeared in at least two separate crime scenes, while two of them re-appeared in five different crime scenes," the report states.

"The pattern suggests planting of evidence by police officers and casts doubt on the self-defence narrative, implying that the victims were likely unarmed at the time of killing," it adds.

The Philippine National Police has repeatedly used the "nanlaban" narrative — in which officers were forced to shoot suspects who allegedly tried to fight back and resist arrest — to justify killings in anti-drug operations.

This time citing police reports submitted to the Supreme Court (SC), the OHCHR also reported that the spot reports contained "strikingly similar language" to describe what each victim allegedly said — "p*tang i*a mo pulis ka pala" — and did — "suspect drew his weapon, fired at the lawmen but missed."

The OHCHR report says this raises doubts about whether the reports "were only filled pro forma."

The reports to the SC were on 22 anti-drug operations in which 29 persons were killed in their homes. All but one of the operations were conducted without warrants, pre-operational plans called for the "immediate apprehension" and "neutralization" of targeted persons, and post-operational reports claimed the targets were killed after resisting, the OHCHR report states.

The SC had ordered the government to submit drug war records as it studies a case challenging the constitutionality of the controversial campaign.

The Free Legal Assistance Group, which represents one set of petitioners in the drug war case, has claimed that the police reports they have reviewed showed similar, “cut-and-paste” accounts of the killings.

In its report, the OHCHR said there has been “near impunity” for alleged extrajudicial killings committed in the context of the anti-illegal drug campaign.

The report mainly concludes that the government’s “heavy-handed” focus on national security, such as in the drug war and its counterterrorism efforts, has led to “serious” human rights violations. -MDM, GMA News