“License to Kill”

At about 11 p.m. on October 4, Visda was outside his home with a young relative when a
woman approached the two, asking Visda to obtain shabu for her. 209 The woman was “very
insistent,” according to the relative, but Visda refused her requests, saying he was not a
pusher and quit drugs, before going inside his home. The family believes the woman trying
to convince Visda to buy drugs for her was part of the ensuing police sting operation. 210
Shortly afterwards, Visda asked his relatives for 40 pesos, saying he needed to buy some
dinner, and left the home. Almost immediately, a neighbor came to inform the family that
Visda had been detained down the road by police officers during an anti-drug raid. 211
When the family ran outside, they saw armed men in civilian clothes, wearing face masks
and motorcycle helmets, accompanied by local barangay officials and barangay security
guards, surrounding Visda, just one block away from their home. The men had tied Visda’s
hands, and told his relatives they were taking him to the nearby police station. 212
CCTV footage that was later made public shows a group of gunmen in civilian clothes
wearing white facemasks escorting Visda out of an alley. The gunmen then tie his hands as
other men with facemasks move in and out of the area on at least six motorcycles. Suddenly,
Visda is pushed on to a motorcycle driven by a man with a facemask and a raincoat, while a
second man with a facemask jumps on the motorcycle behind Visda, sandwiching Visda
man between them. The motorcycle speeds away just as Visda’s relatives arrive, and a man
in a white shirt stands among them, shouting into a walkie-talkie.
When Visda’s relatives arrived at the nearby police station on motorcycle, he was already
dead: they found Visda’s body on the ground just behind the police station, still
handcuffed, dumped there by his abductors. “When we found the body, there were no
police around, only the neighborhood people. The policemen who had taken him were no
longer there,” a relative told Human Rights Watch. 213
209 Ibid.
210 Ibid.
211 Ibid.
212 Ibid.
213 Ibid.
69 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | MARCH 2017