AN ANTI-CRIME group has asked the Supreme Court to create special courts to exclusively hear cases involving collateral victims of the Duterte administration’s war on illegal drugs.
Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Tuesday received a letter from the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption asking her to designate special courts that would handle cases of innocent people getting killed during anti-drug operations to make sure they received justice.
VACC founding chairman Dante Jimenez cited the rising number of “unfortunate killings of innocent victims of crossfires, mistaken identity and the like during the process of police operations.”
His group also urged the high court to monitor the handling of such cases and make sure they were quickly resolved .
The VACC also made a separate request to the Office of the President to create special investigation teams to probe the cases of innocent victims in the war on illegal drugs.
Jimenez cited the incident in Caloocan City last week in which five teenagers were killed as masked gunmen chased and fired shots at a suspected drug dealer.
The teenagers were partying at a house near the shanty of the suspect identified as alias Junior Santor.
Jimenez said only one of the victims had a drug offense record.
The gunfire also killed Santor’s mother Christina and his pregnant common law wife Analyn Dayamla inside their house, which was allegedly being used as a drug den.
Senator Panfilo Lacson recently proposed that the government compensate the families of collateral victims of the war on illegal drugs.
Police records show that 2,174 suspects have been killed in the war on illegal drugs since the start of the Duterte administration.