Five former and current Philippine National Police (PNP) officials have been tagged as suspects in the war on drugs case investigation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to former senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Thursday, July 25.
Trillanes, in his social media, posted a redacted document from the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC stating the names of retired and serving members of the PNP.
Based on the document, the identified officials are: former PNP chiefs Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and retired General Oscar Albayalde, former chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) and currently the acting area commander of Northern Luzon General Romeo Caramat Jr., former Commissioner of the National Police Commission Edilberto Leonardo, and former PNP chief intelligence officer Eleazar Mata.
The OTP stated that it has “reasonable grounds to believe that they may have committed crimes within its jurisdiction.”
iOrbit tried to reach out to Albayalde who may also be running for public office in the 2025 elections. We will update this story once we receive his response.
The lCC investigation opened on September 15, 2021 when a pre-trial chamber of the ICC granted its prosecutor to commence an investigation into the alleged crimes related to the war on drugs against former president Rodrigo Duterte.
“The OTP is currently focussing its investigation on allegations of widespread and systematic killings of individuals in the Philippines as part of a policy to eliminate drug users and suppliers between 2011 and 2019,” the document read. “During this period, large numbers of drug offenders were killed during police enforcement activity.”