MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Wednesday said it supported the plan of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to reinvestigate the high-profile killings related to the war on illegal drugs during the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
In a statement, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said the possible reopening of the investigation showed that the Marcos administration “places the highest importance” on justice and rule of law in the country.
“Of course,” Bersamin said, when asked if Malacañang supports the PNP’s move.
“The reopening of the investigations of the high killings related to the war on drugs should indicate that the Marcos administration places the highest importance on the fair dispensation of justice and on the universal observance of the rule of law in the country,” he added.
PNP spokesman Jean Fajardo said that they would look into the drug-war related killings, particularly the elected officials and other well-known personalities who were killed during the height of the campaign.
This, after retired police colonel Royina Garma, during a hearing at the House of Representatives last Oct. 11, 2024 alleged that Duterte and other high-ranking officials during his administration sanctioned covert operations replicating the Davao City model of extrajudicial killings on a national scale.
In her affidavit, Garma disclosed that Duterte allegedly contacted her about the creation of a national task force, and among the key figures in implementing the scheme was Colonel Edilberto Leonardo.
Garma said Leonardo purportedly collaborated with Duterte and his aide, now Sen. Bong Go, to establish a task force comprising “liquidators” nationwide.
She also said Leonardo allegedly conducted briefings for all Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency officials and even chiefs of the PNP. He also had the final authority on who would be on the watchlist.
But Salvador Panelo, Duterte’s former spokesman and presidential legal counsel, dismissed Garma’s testimony as “pure imagination or fertile speculation.”
Panelo also questioned Garma’s knowledge of the operations, saying her information only came from “hearsay” and “conveyed or relayed to her by sources.”
She might have “succumbed to threat or intimidation under pain of incarceration if she did not make the allegations contained in her affidavit,” he said.
