Eight Philippine police officers have been detained for investigation after a video surfaced showing them humiliating, laughing and taking videos of naked recruits during anti-insurgency training, officials said yesterday.
In the latest hazing scandal to hit the country, national police spokesman Agrimero Cruz Jr said at least three superiors of the eight officers may also be relieved of their posts and investigated over the “barbaric” treatment.
Commission on Human Rights official Byron Bocar said a video sent to the agency showed the officers applying liquid laced with chili pepper on the penises of the trainees, who screamed in pain.
The terrified trainees were also ordered to lick a police insignia coated with the chili liquid and were beaten with sticks as the trainers laughed and took videos with their cellphones. One recruit vomited after being ordered to drink the liquid, officials said.
Commission on Human Rights Chairwoman Loretta Ann Rosales asked Philippines Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo to order an investigation and take steps to prevent police camps from turning into “breeding grounds of future torturers,” Bocar said.
The video was sent by unidentified people who may have been among the mistreated trainees, human rights officials said.
National police Director--General Raul Bacalzo ordered the filing of administrative and criminal complaints against the officers.
A similar hazing scandal hit the Philippine military in March, when communist guerrillas uploaded a video on YouTube showing army officers slapping, punching and beating dozens of recruits who were clad only in shorts. The video sparked public outrage.
The military acknowledged that the training had occurred three years ago and said the officers have been punished.
The recent anti-terrorism training was conducted in Laguna province, south of Manila, for would-be police special forces to be deployed against communist and Muslim insurgents, Cruz said, adding that he condemned the cruelty and saying it was not sanctioned by police officials.
The underfunded military and police have been battling allegations of human rights violations as well as widespread corruption, which has sparked unrest in the past.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.