Police officers in the Philippines arrested for kidnapping 4 tourists and demanding ransom

Four police officers deployed in the Philippine capital region were arrested for kidnapping four foreign tourists for ransom, officials said on Wednesday.

Two of the police officers on motorcycles stopped a luxury car carrying three Chinese and a Malaysian over the weekend, while their armed civilian colleagues handcuffed the four tourists and dragged them into a van. Two of the Chinese managed to escape and notified the authorities, police said.

The remaining captives were beaten by the kidnappers but were released overnight after paying a ransom of 2.5 million pesos ($43,100), Interior Minister Benhur Abalos said. Information from the released tourists and images from surveillance cameras led to the arrest of the four police officers, including a police major, he said.

“I was shocked that police officers were involved,” Abalos said at a news conference where the four officers were introduced in handcuffs and orange prison shirts. “This incident is a serious violation of public trust and the core values ​​of the police.”

Police said they were looking for at least 10 other suspects who were not police officers but were involved in the kidnapping.

Police said they had filed criminal charges against the suspects for kidnapping, car theft and robbery.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte had described many members of the more than 230,000-strong national police force as “corrupt to the core,” even though he had tasked them with enforcing his crackdown on drugs, which led to the killing of thousands of mostly poor suspects.

The International Criminal Court is investigating the mass killings as a possible crime against humanity. Duterte and the national police chiefs under his command had denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, even though the former president publicly threatened drug suspects with death during his presidency, which ends in 2022.