KUALA LUMPUR – Four Philippine police officers have been arrested for involvement in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme targeting four foreign tourists, including a Malaysian, on Wednesday.
According to local officials, two of the officers on motorcycles flagged down a luxury car carrying the Malaysian and three Chinese over the weekend, while their armed civilian cohorts handcuffed and dragged the four tourists into a van, reported AFP.
Two of the Chinese managed to escape and notify authorities, police said.
The remaining captives were beaten by the kidnappers but freed overnight after payment of a 2.5 million peso (RM671,250) ransom, 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 policemen were the ones involved.
“This incident is a serious breach of public trust and the core values of the police force,” Abalos said in a news conference, where the four police were presented in handcuffs and orange detainee shirts.
Abalos said four of the suspects are police officers assigned to different units in Metro Manila.
Police said they are looking for at least 10 other suspects who were not police but implicated in the kidnapping.
Abalos said the policemen and their civilian cohorts conspired in the kidnapping of three Chinese men and a Malaysian along Taft Avenue in Barangay 44, Pasay, at around 12.20am on Sunday.
Criminal complaints for kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery against the suspects have also been filed, police said.
Former president Rodrigo Duterte had described many members of the national police, totalling more than 230,000 nationwide, as “rotten to the core”, although he ordered them to enforce his anti-drugs crackdown that led to the killings of thousands of mostly poor suspects.
The International Criminal Court has been investigating the large-scale killings as a possible crime against humanity.
Duterte and the national police chiefs who served under him had denied authorising extrajudicial killings. This is despite the fact that the former president had publicly threatened drug suspects with death during his presidency, which ended in 2022. – June 6, 2024