• Two of the Chinese managed to escape and notified authorities.
• After paying a ransom of 2.5 million pesos ($43,100), the kidnappers released the remaining captives overnight, having beaten them earlier.
• The arrest was based on information provided by the freed tourists and images from security cameras.

Officials announced on Wednesday that they have arrested four police officers assigned in the Philippine capital region for kidnapping four foreign tourists for ransom.

Two of the officers onboard motorcycles flagged down a luxury car carrying three Chinese and a Malaysian over the weekend, while their armed civilian cohorts handcuffed and dragged the four tourists into a van, police said. Two of the Chinese managed to escape and notified authorities.

Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos confirmed that the kidnappers beat the remaining captives but released them overnight after the payment of a 2.5-million-peso ($43,100) ransom. He mentioned that information provided by the freed tourists and images from security cameras led to the arrest of the four police officers, including a police major.

Police have confirmed their active search for at least 10 other suspects who, while not police officers, have been implicated in the kidnapping. They also mentioned that they have filed criminal complaints for kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery against the suspects.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte characterized many members of the national police, numbering more than 230,000 nationwide, as “rotten to the core,” despite ordering them to enforce his anti-drugs crackdown, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of mostly poor suspects.

The International Criminal Court has been investigating large-scale killings as a possible crime against humanity. Duterte and the national police chiefs who served under him have denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, although the former president publicly threatened drug suspects with death during his presidency, which ended in 2022.

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