{"id":206935,"date":"2019-03-26T04:49:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-26T08:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=206935"},"modified":"2019-03-26T04:49:42","modified_gmt":"2019-03-26T08:49:42","slug":"ex-official-duterte-photographed-with-drug-linked-chinese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/03\/26\/ex-official-duterte-photographed-with-drug-linked-chinese\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-official: Duterte photographed with drug linked Chinese"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
FILE: Malaca\u00f1ang on Friday said President Rodrigo R. Duterte still believes that corporal punishment is an effective way of disciplining children that is why he vetoed a bill banning its practice. KING RODRIGUEZ\/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 A former senior Philippine police\nofficial said President Rodrigo Duterte, who has faced widespread criticism\nover his deadly drug crackdown, has been photographed with two Chinese men\ninvolved in illegal drugs and that he sent a report to warn him about the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dismissed Senior Superintendent Eduardo Acierto said late\nSunday that he’s unaware what government action has been taken after he\nsubmitted his report about the Chinese men to top police officials starting in\nDecember 2017. Instead, Acierto said he’s now facing illegal drugs complaints\nand has been the target of death threats that forced him to go into hiding\nrecently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn my investigation, I discovered that our president … is\noften accompanied by two people deeply involved in illegal drugs,\u201d Acierto, who\nwas a veteran anti-narcotics official before he was dismissed last year by an\nanti-graft agency, said in a video message shown to reporters before he\nappeared at a news conference in Manila. \u201cWhat popped into my mind at the time\nwas maybe the president isn’t aware that these are suspected drug lords.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General Aaron\nAquino told The Associated Press that he received Acierto’s report and sent it\nto Duterte’s office, adding that both his office and that of the president took\nsteps to validate the allegations against the two Chinese. An initial check\nshowed that at least one of the Chinese was not facing any illegal drugs case\nin the country, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a suspected drug dealer in the northern\nPhilippines with the same name as one of the two Chinese Acierto identified in\nhis report, but Aquino said investigators would have to check if they were the\nsame person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s wrong to say that there was no action taken because it\nwas acted upon,\u201d Aquino said. He played down the significance of the\nphotographs showing Duterte with the two Chinese men, saying officials often\nget approached by all sorts of people for group photographs without being able\nto rapidly check their background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get to be asked for selfie shots and I wouldn’t know that\nthe one I’m being photographed with is a drug lord,\u201d Aquino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from his alleged involvement in the irregular issuance\nof gun permits that led an anti-graft prosecutor to order his dismissal last\nyear, Acierto also faces criminal complaints for his alleged role in the entry\nof a large amount of methamphetamine through the Bureau of Customs in Manila,\nAquino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn terms of credibility, it’s evident that he’s not\ncredible because, first of all, he has been implicated in the smuggling of\ndrugs,\u201d Aquino said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acierto’s confidential report about the alleged drug links\nof the two Chinese contained many details, including the involvement of one of\nthem in the establishment of a secret methamphetamine drugs manufacturing\nlaboratory that was raided by authorities in 2004 in southern Davao city, where\nDuterte served as a longtime mayor before rising to the presidency in mid-2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police have not said if they investigated those specific\nallegations or what they found out. Profiles of the two Chinese provided by\nAcierto to reporters said they were similarly involved in the \u201cmanufacturing,\nfinancing, the importation, transhipment and local distribution of meth or\nshabu,\u201d referring to the local name of the powerful stimulant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acierto said he made a video message about his findings and\ncontacted the media to make them public to be sure the potential danger the two\nmen posed would be dealt with even if he gets killed. He did not elaborate on\nthe death threats but said they forced him to go into hiding with the help of\nfriends and church people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acierto, who spent 18 years of his 33-year police career in\nanti-narcotics work, said he initially welcomed Duterte’s passion to combat\nillegal drugs. But he said he later realized that the president’s crackdown\ntook a wrong approach by targeting mostly poor drug suspects instead of\naddressing the \u201csupply side\u201d by going after drug producers, financiers and\nlargescale traffickers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe the killings are not the solution and most of those\nkilled belonged to the lower classes,\u201d Acierto said. \u201cIf there’s supply there\nwill be addicts. Will they annihilate all these Filipinos?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 5,000 drug suspects have been killed in what the\npolice reported were gunbattles that ensued during drug raids under Duterte’s\ncrackdown. The killings have alarmed Western governments and human rights group\nand sparked two complaints for mass murder before the International Criminal\nCourt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Duterte denies condoning extrajudicial killings but has\nopenly threatened drug suspects with death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associated Press videojournalist Cecilia Forbes contributed\nto this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA, Philippines \u2014 A former senior Philippine police official said President Rodrigo Duterte, who has faced widespread criticism over his …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":203937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","mauthors-jim-gomez","mauthors-bullit-marquez","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206936,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206935\/revisions\/206936"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}