Slain Philippine teen’s family files murder complaint against police

The parents and lawyers of a Philippine high school student shot dead last week filed a murder complaint on Friday against three anti-narcotics policemen amid rare public outrage about the country’s war on drugs.

The death of 17-year-old Kian Loyd Delos Santos on August 16 in a rundown area of Manila has drawn huge domestic attention to allegations by activists that police have been systematically executing suspected users and dealers, a charge the authorities deny.

The head of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) and the parents of the slain youth submitted the complaint against the three policemen at the justice department, calling for them to be charged with murder and breaches of a law on torture.

The PAO, a government agency, provides indigent litigants free legal help.

Delos Santos was found dead in an alley with a gun in his left hand. Police said they killed him in self defence, but his family said he had no weapon, was right-handed and had no involvement in drugs.

Security cameras showed the officers aggressively escorting a man matching Delos Santos’ description in the direction of the spot where he was killed. The three policemen admit they were the people shown in the video, but that they were escorting another suspect, not Delos Santos.