CHR wants charges filed against maintainers of secret mpd cell

INTO THE LIGHT A woman detained in the secret jail of a Tondo police station squats with other drug suspects on the floor of a narrow cell found by a team from the Commission on Human Rights behind a wooden shelf (see sketch, inset). About a dozen men and women were found huddled inside. RAFFY LERMA/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) asked the Office of the Ombudsman on Wednesday to file criminal and administrative charges against the station commander and personnel of the Manila Police District Station 1 in Raxabago, Tondo for maintaining a secret jail.

According to the CHR, Supt. Robert Domingo and his men should be held liable for arbitrary detention, grave threats, grave coercion, robbery and extortion as well as torture. They should also be charged administratively for violating police operational procedures and international human rights standards.

CHR Commissioner Karen Gomez-Dumpit was with members of the CHR team who conducted a surprise inspection of the police station on April 27. Behind a wooden shelf, they found a dozen people, three of them women, in a cell without light or water.

The detainees, who were arrested for drug offenses, said they had been there for days without charges being filed against them. They also claimed that they were being asked for money in exchange for their release.

“This is one of the most shocking and dehumanizing violations of the rights of detained persons in the Philippines to date, and we expect the Philippine National Police to take this matter very seriously,” Dumpit said.

She called on PNP Director-General Ronald dela Rosa to prevent the police officers concerned from harassing the 12 detainees, their kin and others who would come forward to report similar abuses.