Nearly a decade after the deed, a police intelligence officer in then President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration has been convicted of homicide for the death of a drug suspect in Baguio City in July 2016.

It is only the fifth known conviction related to Duterte’s “war on drugs” that has resulted in the extrajudicial killing (EJK) of tens of thousands of mostly poor Filipinos. The government’s formal estimate is 6,000, but rights groups peg the number at 30,000. The former president is now in the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, awaiting the confirmation of charges late this month.

“Evil never wins in the end,” Kristina Conti, human rights lawyer and counsel for the drug war victims in the case at the ICC, told CoverStory on Monday. She described the conviction of Police Col. Dante Lubos as a rare victory against impunity.

In an Aug. 22 ruling, a copy of which was obtained by CoverStory, the Baguio City Regional Trial Court Branch 60 sentenced Lubos to up to 14 years in prison for the killing of Ryan Dave Almora, then 33, in a buy-bust operation in the victim’s house in the summer capital.

Presiding Judge Rufus Gayo Malecdan Jr. ordered Lubos, who headed Baguio’s Central Intelligence Unit at the time of the buy-bust operation, to pay Almora’s family about ₱1.45 million in damages, lawyer’s fees, and civil indemnity.

In a public Facebook post on Monday, Lubos’ lawyer Francis Camtugan said his client is innocent.

Lubos now serves as chief of the regional intelligence unit of the Police Regional Office 3. He was also previously assigned at the police provincial offices of La Union and Nueva Vizcaya.

He is the highest-ranking police officer to be convicted in Duterte’s war on drugs.

‘Nanlaban killings’

Citing two expert witnesses presented by the prosecution, Judge Malecdan said Almora’s injuries “did not indicate that he was in a position to fight back against Lubos” and the latter’s team.

Conti said the conviction “shows how ‘nanlaban killings’ are utterly wrong and criminal.” She was referring to the common claim of police officers that the suspects had resisted arrest—“nanlaban”—leading to their being killed. 

“The community of human rights defenders are heartened that police narratives are interrogated well during trial, and that opens the door for other incidents to be investigated and prosecuted. Unfortunately, being able to bring these killings to court is more the exception than the rule,” Conti said.

Per the court ruling, Almora was first hit in the abdomen, causing him to fall to the ground on his back. He was then shot again in the right chest. Based on the trajectory of the second bullet, the shooter was standing over Almora, the court said.

Lubos had admitted shooting Almora during the police operation, saying it was “necessary under the circumstances and in the performance of [his] official duty.”

One of the expert witnesses, medico-legal officer Dr. Jaime Leal, said Almora was already dead when the third shot was fired at him, this time in the left chest.

Andrew Bacayan, another expert witness from the National Bureau of Investigation, said the trajectory of the bullet from the upper side of the body to the lumbar area indicated that Almora “was on his knees pleading for his life when he was shot.”

“Notwithstanding these two different versions, one fact remains clear: Almora was in a defenseless and compromised position when he was shot and killed, contrary to the accused’s claim that Almora was firing shots at him when he (Almora) was shot by the accused,” Judge Malecdan said in the ruling.

“This strongly supports the prosecution’s claim that Almora committed no unlawful aggression either toward [Jerry] Silawon, the civilian informant, and the accused at the time he was shot and killed,” the judge added.

An ‘overkill’?

In December 2017, then Supreme Court Justice Samuel Martires cited the operation against Almora, pointing out that the Philippine National Police had sent eight units just to arrest the drug suspect.

“There were two police chief inspectors involved, eight units from the PNP in a buy-bust operation. Was this not an overkill? Eight units, not eight personnel, eight units. Meaning to say, eight different units from the Philippine National Police,” Martires said then.

Malecdan noted in his ruling that Lubos, who was supposedly crouched earlier behind a wall 12 meters away, said he had entered Almora’s doorway, identified himself as a police officer, and returned fire after Almora shot at him several times, killing Almora with three shots.

The judge rejected this account, saying there was no evidence that Almora had fired at Lubos or his team.

Almora tested negative in a paraffin test, and no bullet slugs or bullet holes were found at the crime scene, indicating “the likelihood that Almora did not in fact fire shots at the time,” Malecdan said. 

The defense also failed to prove that the .22 MRF Astra pistol allegedly found near Almora’s body was registered in his name, the judge said, adding: “No fingerprints of the victim were recovered from the handgun.”

Brig. Gen. Randulf Tuaño, the PNP public information chief and spokesperson, did not immediately respond to CoverStory’s request for comment on the latest development involving a police official.

Appeal

“We maintain the innocence of our client,” Lubos’ lawyer Camtugan said on FB, adding that they had already filed a notice of appeal.

“The Court did not apply the dreaded OCA 163-2013 but only required us to post additional bond (which we immediately complied [with], minutes before we filed the notice of appeal),” he said.

The OCA 163-2013 directs all trial court judges to order the transfer of convicted persons to the New Bilibid Prison even if a motion for reconsideration or an appeal is pending.

Lubos “remains in active duty and he is one of the best police officer[s] we ever met,” Camtugan said. “We shall fight till the fat lady sings.”

The lawyer also said the case against Lubos had earlier been downgraded from murder to homicide, [and that the charges against the other defendants numbering over 40 had already been dismissed.

“Our client was the remaining defendant,” he said.

According to Conti, “it is also telling that the decision concludes that this is an unintentional killing (homicide), contrary to our position that [‘nanlaban killings’] are premeditated.”

Camtugan said that as of Monday, “we are waiting for the elevation of the case files to the Court of Appeals and for the letter from the Chief Records Officer of the appellate court to direct us to file briefs (defense, private complainant, and the Office of the Solicitor General).”

‘Small fry, not big fish’

The conviction of Lubos is the fifth known drug conviction after separate courts issued guilty verdicts on the police officers involved in the killing of Kian Loyd delos Santos, then 17, in August 2017; Carl Arnaiz and Reynaldo “Kulot” de Guzman in the same year; and Luis Bonifacio and his son Gabriel in 2016.

In the Arnaiz-De Guzman case, Patrolman Jeffrey Perez was convicted of torture and planting of evidence in 2022, and of murder in 2023.

“In the context of the ICC case against Duterte, we think this will reinforce the premise that justice here in the Philippines can be delivered, but against the small fry, not the big fish,” Conti said.

She said the conviction could be additional contextual information for the ICC’s investigation.

“At this stage, they are identifying who are MOST responsible for the killings in the war on drugs, and to get there, they need to know ALL who are responsible,” she said.

Conti believes that Philippine courts open avenues to justice, “but the path to their doors are fraught with uncertainties, frustrations, and even danger.”

She said it is the whole mechanism of accountability that makes the Philippines unable and unwilling to genuinely investigate or prosecute, which the drug war victims have denounced.

According to Conti, the police have poorly investigated crimes and have not identified the participants of crimes, especially those committed during police operations, and that prosecutors have been limited by current jurisprudence on police liabilities in operations.

“Before victims can even get to the courtroom steps, they would have faced a whole array of constraints—financial, logistical, psychological, and yes, even physical,” Conti said.

Asked what factors have prevented other drug cases from prospering, she cited the poor or nonexistent investigation of killings. She said that in police operations, paperwork is missing, and that in vigilante killings, perpetrators are not identified.

“Witnesses are scared, intimidated or, sometimes, dead. Soco (scene of the crime) reports are missing or incomplete. There are no ballistics reports that can pinpoint from which gun a bullet/shell/casing came,” Conti said, adding:

“These cases are being treated as separate crimes instead of being appreciated as part of a whole modus operandi. At this rate, all ‘nanlaban killings’ should be investigated.”