“License to Kill”

On the evening of June 30, Dela Cruz went to play cards at his neighbor’s house. Family
members told Human Rights Watch that at about 1 a.m. on July 1, a group of five masked
armed men in civilian clothes broke down the door of the neighbor’s house and rushed
inside. 89 Awakened by screaming, the Dela Cruz family rushed outside. A relative said:
The other two people inside the neighbor’s house were grabbed by the
armed men, and told to go outside. Oliver remained inside, we could see
him kneeling in a surrendering position. The men grabbed him and
slammed him into a concrete wall several times, and then they threw him
out of the door, to the outside. We saw the shooting, we were just there.
Oliver’s face was bleeding from being hit, and he was begging them for
mercy when he was shot, he was just lying on the ground at that time. He
did not have a gun or try to grab a gun—he was already badly beaten and
couldn’t have fought back even if he had wanted to. 90
Family members who witnessed the incident said that uniformed police officers and SOCO
officers were already waiting just outside the neighborhood while the masked men carried
out the killing:
The van of the local police and the van of the SOCO investigators were
already parked on the main road outside the neighborhood even before the
killing happened. The five killers came on foot from the main road, they
[had] arrived there on motorcycles.… The killers stayed even when the
SOCO came. Two of the ones wearing masks spoke to the uniformed police
and the SOCO, so they were all together. 91
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid.
91 Ibid.
LICENSE TO KILL 44