Philippine Mayor Accused of Drug Ties by Duterte Dies in Police Raid…

In Philippines, Doubts About Police Raid That Killed a Mayor

MANILA — Critics of the Philippine government are raising doubts about a weekend police operation that left 15 people dead, including a mayor accused of drug trafficking by President Rodrigo Duterte, suggesting that the bloodshed was a summary execution disguised as legitimate law enforcement.

But the police have shrugged off such criticism, saying they will continue to pursue scores of other officials Mr. Duterte has publicly identified as “narco politicians.”

Reynaldo Parojinog, the mayor of the city of Ozamiz in the southern Philippines, was killed at his home early Sunday along with his wife and five other people. The police said that Mr. Parojinog’s guards opened fire on them as they tried to enforce a search warrant, and that the seven people were killed in the ensuing firefight.

A raid at another house owned by the Parojinog family left eight others dead, according to an updated report from the police, who originally said five people had been killed there. Several people were arrested, including the mayor’s daughter, Nova Princess Parojinog-Echavez, the deputy mayor of Ozamiz, who was brought to Manila under heavy guard. She was charged with drug possession and illegal possession of firearms.

Senator Antonio Trillanes, a critic of Mr. Duterte’s crackdown on drugs, which has left thousands dead at the hands of the police or vigilantes, on Tuesday described the killings as a “rub-out.”

“It is yet another proof of how Duterte’s policy flouts human rights, due process and the rule of law and further reinforces the cases of crimes against humanity filed against him,” said Mr. Trillanes, who was involved in filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court in The Hague accusing Mr. Duterte of masterminding extrajudicial killings.

“As Duterte and his police chief have forewarned, more people will die in pursuit of their drug war,” Mr. Trillanes said.

Mr. Parojinog and his daughter were among roughly 150 Philippine officials, including mayors, judges and police officers, whom Mr. Duterte accused last year of being involved in illegal narcotics, reading their names from a list on live television.

The president encouraged officials on the list to report to the national police headquarters in Manila to clear their names if they considered themselves innocent. Mr. Parojinog and his daughter did so, telling reporters at the time that their political enemies may have generated the accusations against them. The mayor said his family had actively fought crime in Ozamiz, including drug trafficking.

But the family has never denied having links to the Kuratong Baleleng organization, which began as an armed militia unit formed by the military in the late 1980s to help combat communist guerrillas, and later evolved into a criminal organization. It has been dominant in Ozamiz politics for years.

As of Tuesday, Mr. Duterte had not commented on the raids Sunday. But officials in his government have distanced him from the operation, saying it was carried out independently by the police.

On Monday, Gen. Ronald dela Rosa, the chief of the Philippine National Police, appeared undaunted by questions that were beginning to emerge about the killings, saying that the police would aggressively pursue other officials on Mr. Duterte’s list. “We have begun a case buildup against them,” he said in brief remarks to reporters. “Once there is a case already, we will operate.”

It is not clear how Mr. Duterte’s list was compiled; officials in his government have said that the president has his own sources. General dela Rosa said Monday that if officials were put on the list in error, they had nothing to fear, but that if they were confirmed to be involved in drugs, “then they can prepare themselves.”

Two other mayors on Mr. Duterte’s list were gunned down by the police within weeks of each other last year. One, Rolando Espinosa Sr., was killed in his jail cell, which the police said they had raided on suspicion that he was continuing to direct drug operations from there. The police said Mr. Espinosa had pulled a gun on the officers.

Nineteen police officers were arrested in connection with Mr. Espinosa’s killing, and a Senate panel that investigated his death — along with that of another mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom, who was killed at a police checkpoint — recommended they be charged with murder.

But the Justice Department charged them with homicide, a lesser, bailable offense, and the officers were released on bail last month. Critics of that decision have noted that the Justice Department is led by a fraternity brother of Mr. Duterte.

Thousands have died in the crackdown on narcotics overseen by Mr. Duterte, many of them accused of being drug dealers and addicts, though some may have had no such involvement. Many died at the hands of unknown assailants, but many others were killed by the police in what the authorities called justified shootings but critics say they believe were deliberate killings.

The raids on Sunday came just days after Mr. Duterte vowed to continue the campaign in the face of widespread international criticism.

“I have resolved that no matter how long it takes, the fight against illegal drugs will continue because it is the root of suffering,” he said in an address to Congress. Those involved in drug trafficking will face “either jail or hell,” he said.

Rights groups said on Tuesday that those comments encouraged a sense of impunity among the police, which Transparency International has called one of the most corrupt government agencies in a country where corruption is widespread. Such remarks from the president have an “emboldening effect that is difficult for policemen to ignore,” said Romel Bagares, a lawyer at the Center for International Law, an organization that aids families of victims of extrajudicial killings.

Mr. Bagares said that in cases where officers claim to have killed a suspect in self-defense, the police are formally required to bring the matter before a prosecutor, who determines whether there was foul play.

But in practice, that rarely happens, which “raises serious questions about the truthfulness of police accounts of these alleged shootouts between police officers and drug suspects,” said Mr. Bagares, whose group is representing a survivor of a similar police raid last August.

He said human rights groups would watch the Parojinog case closely. He noted Philippine news reports in which an employee of the Parojinog family who survived one of the raids — identified only as Cesar — described it as a summary execution by the police.

Responding to those reports on Tuesday, Dionardo Carlos, a senior superintendent and a spokesman for the national police, challenged the employee to file a sworn statement in court.

Philippine police killed a mayor and much of his family. Was it a raid gone wrong, or a massacre?


Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog’s supporters have cleaned up most of the blood, but its smell still lingers, a pungent, metallic odor. His walls and ceiling are riddled with shrapnel. A framed photo of his children hangs on the stairway, shattered and askew.

It happened just after 2 a.m. July 30, as a rare power blackout cloaked the city in darkness.

Police raided Parojinog’s house in central Ozamiz, a city of 140,000 people on the Philippine island Mindanao. For at least 30 minutes, the neighborhood — a warren of low-slung homes beneath a tangle of telephone wires — convulsed with gunshots and explosions. By sunrise, as the chaos subsided, 15 people were dead, including Parojinog, 60; his wife Susan, 52; his brother, his sister, and several bodyguards.

The police claim they were serving a search warrant for drugs and weapons. Parojinog’s bodyguards attacked, and they returned fire.

The Parojinogs claim the police perpetrated a massacre.

“Everybody’s in shock,” said a close relative who, like many Parojinog supporters interviewed for this story, refused to give her name, citing fears that police would ? them. “All the people here in Ozamiz, they feel sad for him. All of them.”

The incident represents a new stage of President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, a brutal, often extralegal campaign that has left thousands dead. So far, most victims have been impoverished addicts and low-level runners who turned to drugs — primarily shabu, an inexpensive methamphetamine — to escape the grinding drudgery of urban life.

In March, National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa announced a new phase of the campaign. Police would now target the trade’s enablers — “big-time drug personalities and groups.” Parojinog was on the list.

"The Ozamiz incident is a grim warning that those who persist in the illegal drug trade will only reap what they have sowed,” Dela Rosa told reporters.

On Wednesday, Duterte stood in Manila by the police that conducted the raid. “I will answer for it,” he said. “I will say I ordered it.”

Duterte, after a meeting Monday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a regional conference in Manila, angrily brushed off reporters' questions about his human rights record.

"Human rights … ," Duterte said, using an expletive.

"Policemen and soldiers have died on me. The war now in Marawi, what caused it but drugs?” he said, referencing an armed conflict in the country's south that has killed nearly 700 people. “So human rights, don't go there."

Parojinog is not the first Philippine mayor to fall victim to the campaign. In August, 2016, Duterte publicly linked more than 150 officials and policemen to illegal drugs. In October, police shot and killed Samsudin Dimaukom, a small-town mayor in the southern Philippines, at a checkpoint. In November, another small-town mayor, Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, was shot dead in a jail cell. Both were on Duterte’s list.

But the killings July 30 — perhaps the bloodiest of the campaign — have gripped the nation, riling up senators and attracting wall-to-wall coverage in the local media.

“This is clearly an indication that the war against illegal drugs is going to continue in earnest,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, author of the forthcoming “Duterte’s Rise.” “I wouldn’t be surprised if the incident in Ozamiz is all about the national police saying, ‘Now we’re moving up the supply chain and targeting the big boys.’”

At least a half-dozen senators have publicly questioned the incident. Why did police serve a search warrant at 2 a.m.? If the mayor’s security detail fought back, why were no police seriously injured? Did 15 people really need to die?

Sen. Panfilo Lacson warned that the deaths “create the impression that search warrants are merely being used by the [Philippine National Police] to facilitate extrajudicial killing.” Sen. Leila De Lima, a prominent opposition figure, called the incident a “plain and simple extermination.” At least two senators have called for an investigation.

Jovie Espenido, Ozamiz City’s police chief, oversaw the department in Leyte when that city’s mayor was killed in November. He was transferred to Ozamiz City the following month.

“There were reports that Mayor Parojinog was involved in not only drugs, but also had been prosecuted by the government for involvement in robbery,” he said in an interview. “It's public knowledge in the city that they're armed.”

Espenido said police arrived at Parojinog’s house after 2 a.m. and quickly encountered gunfire. Two rounds hit a police vehicle, and one grazed an officer’s head. Officers then heard an explosion inside the house; when they entered, they found one of Parojinog’s security guards holding the pin of a grenade, his legs blown off at the knees.

Espenido shared photographs of contraband his force had ostensibly confiscated during the raid: so many handguns, shotguns and assault rifles, they couldn’t fit on one table.

Police also arrested Parojinog’s daugter, Vice Mayor Nova Princess Parojinog, and his son, Reynaldo "Dodo" Parojinog Jr.

“We have apprehended here 140 or 150 people [in Ozamiz] for involvement in illegal drugs,” Espenido said. “And we've tracked them to the vice mayor.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Parojinog’s friends, family and supporters gathered at his wake in a basketball court near his home. Five open caskets, each containing a heavily made-up Parojinog family member, were ringed with dozens of floral wreaths donated by city hall employees and local businesses — Mhars MC Medical, the 1st Valley Bank.

There, two relatives described a very different scene. They were far from the house when the raid occurred, held back by a police cordon. But they said a witness — Parojinog’s brother’s driver — survived, and they recounted his story.

Police roused the Parajinogs, then corralled them in the living room and made them lie on their stomachs, according to the driver. They walked out and threw a grenade into the room. The blast killed Parojinog’s sister Mona, 52, and one other person immediately. Then police returned and shot three survivors: Parojinog, his wife and his brother.

The driver smeared the mayor’s blood on his face and body so police would think he was dead, then crawled from the house once they’d left. The relatives would not give the driver’s name, and said he was in hiding.

“Now the family seeks justice, especially for the [mayor’s] sister and the brother — they were innocent, and not on the list,” said the other family member. “Why did law enforcement ? them all, and not investigate them? We're asking why. It's a big question mark.”

On Tuesday, Parojinog’s nephew died in the hospital, bringing the death toll to 16.

Parojinog’s employees accused the police of a coverup. “He had a lot of cameras — six of them,” said one. “Because he knew that something bad would happen to him.” Police confiscated all of them in the raid. When asked why Parojinog was afraid, the employee said: “because he was a politician.”

The Parojinogs have cast a shadow over the region since the 1980s, when the Philippine military helped Reynaldo’s father, Octavio Parojinog, organize a vigilante group to combat the province’s communist guerrillas. The group, Kuratong Baleneng, evolved into a criminal syndicate.