NYTimes | Mr. Duterte has not commented on the case, which has been widely reported in the local news media. In a speech
on Wednesday, he said that the police should not use excessive force,
but he showed no sign of backing down from his call to kill drug
suspects.
“The
fight against drugs will continue unrelenting until we have destroyed
the apparatus operating in the entire country,” he said.
Senator
Leila de Lima, the former Philippine secretary of justice, called the
killing a “summary execution” and said the evidence was so clear-cut
that the authorities had “no choice” but to bring charges.
The
case is one of several expected to be the focus of potentially
explosive hearings next week before the Senate Committee on Justice and
Human Rights, which Ms. de Lima oversees.
Mr.
Duterte lashed out at Ms. de Lima in his speech on Wednesday, accusing
her, without providing evidence, of having an affair with her married
driver, who he said collected drug payoffs for her.
Ms.
de Lima called the accusation “foul” and added, “If this is his way of
stopping the Senate’s investigation on the extrajudicial killings, he
can try,” but she insisted that she would not call off the hearings.
Although
the killings have dispensed with what Mr. Duterte has called “the
rigmarole” of due process, his drug war has proved wildly popular in a
country plagued by crime.
The blunt-spoken Mr. Duterte made his name as the mayor of Davao City, where vigilante killings starting in the 1980s are credited with helping reduce crime and making it one of the country’s safest places.
Since
Mr. Duterte has taken his campaign nationwide, more than 600,000 drug
dealers and users have turned themselves in to avoid being killed, the
authorities say. The result, they say, has been a visible reduction in
drug use and petty crime.
