4 policemen guilty of drug war killings

(UPDATES) FOUR Philippine policemen were found guilty on Tuesday of killing a father and son, court officials said, in a rare case of law enforcement officers being prosecuted for taking part in former president Rodrigo Duterte's deadly drug war.

The low-ranking officers were all sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for the shooting deaths of the two victims at a Manila slum during an antidrug police operation in 2016, Manila Regional Trial Court Judge Rowena Alejandria said in her written verdict that was read in court on Tuesday.

«It must be worthy to note that the accused themselves did not deny their presence and participation in the police operation conducted, the same event where the victims Luis and Gabriel were killed,» Alejandria wrote.

Luis Bonifacio was 45, and his son Gabriel Bonifacio was 19 when they were killed.

Thousands of drug suspects were killed by police and unknown gunmen in a campaign that became the centerpiece of Duterte's rule from 2016–2022, a crackdown that critics described as state-sponsored extrajudicial killings and is now a subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Luis Bonifacio's partner, Mary Ann Domingo, cried on her son's shoulder as they listened to the verdict on two counts of homicide, each being read at the cramped northern Manila courtroom.

She later told reporters that she felt the ruling showed «justice still exists.»

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«I hope these [convictions] will continue not just for me but for the other victims of extrajudicial killings,» she added.

Records showed the Caloocan policemen, who had claimed that the victims resisted arrest, swooped into the house of the Bonifacios as part of the government's «tokhang» operation on Sept. 15, 2016.

Domingo, however, said the policemen barged into their home, then ordered her and her three minor children out of the house as Luis was on his knees while Gabriel begged them not to hurt his father.

She then heard gunshots from inside the house.

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Hospital records indicated that the father and son were killed by multiple gunshots.

Manila policemen Virgilio Cervantes, Arnel de Guzman, Johnston Alacre and Artemio Saguros, who attended the