EDITORIAL - Take no prisoners

Those in charge of Leyte’s provincial jail in Baybay City must be sacked. First, if the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group is correct, the jailers allowed the late Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa to bring guns and drugs into the detention facility. Second, the jailers failed to coordinate properly with a CIDG team that purportedly wanted to serve a search warrant on Espinosa at the unholy hour of 4 a.m., on suspicion that he was dealing in guns and drugs. And third, footage from the jail’s CCTV is missing.

Espinosa’s killing is bad news for those who have been persuaded by authorities to surrender. Protection from being executed, either by police or by faceless vigilantes, is precisely why Espinosa and several other drug personalities have turned themselves in. Espinosa had earlier seen six of his son Kerwin’s bodyguards killed in a police raid on one of their homes.

Espinosa may be unlamented among those who are sick of the drug menace and the dysfunctional Philippine justice system. But the killing of a man identified by President Duterte himself as a “narco politician” is marked by a worrisome brazenness and disregard for the niceties of due process. Duterte had ordered his security forces to “shoot on sight” the Espinosas if they resisted arrest. With the mayor’s killing, there are people wondering if the President has also instructed those waging his war on drugs to take no prisoners.

The President has been railing at human rights “bleeding hearts” for accusing him of sanctioning extrajudicial killings. He and his officials argue that there are no such killings, and that the thousands of fatalities so far in his drug war were either slain in legitimate police operations or by unknown vigilantes.

The police version of the death of Espinosa is so shot full of holes that senators are reportedly planning to reopen their probe into extrajudicial killings under Duterte’s watch. If it can happen to a mayor in a provincial jail, it can happen to the tens of thousands of people who have surrendered to authorities under Oplan Tokhang.

Espinosa’s death comes on the heels of the killing of another mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom of Datu Saudi Ampatuan town, who was slain with nine of his bodyguards at a police checkpoint in North Cotabato last Oct. 28. If the President insists on the legitimacy of his bloody war on drugs, he must see to it that the unvarnished truth in these bloody encounters will be known.