Duterte met the parents of the schoolboy, 17-year-old Kian Loyd delos Santos, at the presidential palace
in Manila on Monday, officials said. Details of the meeting were not immediately available.
Earlier,
Duterte broke off midway through a prepared speech at the Hero’s
Cemetery on the outskirts of Manila and addressed impromptu comments to
Jovie Espenido, the police chief of a town in the south where the mayor
was killed in an anti-drugs raid.
“Your
duty requires you to overcome the resistance of the person you are
arresting... (if) he resists, and it is a violent one... you are free to
kill the idiots, that is my order to you,” Duterte told the police
officer.
Duterte added that “murder and homicide
and unlawful killings” were not allowed and that police had to uphold
the rule of law while carrying out their duties.
Duterte
unleashed the anti-drugs war after taking office in June last year
following an election campaign in which he vowed to use deadly force to
wipe out crime and drugs.
Thousands of people have been killed and the violence has been criticized by much of the international community.
Domestic
opposition has been largely muted but the killing of delos Santos by
anti-drugs officers on Aug 16 has sparked rare public outrage.
More
than 1,000 people, including nuns, priests and hundreds of children,
joined his funeral procession on Saturday, turning the march into one of
the biggest protests yet against Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign.
Delos
Santos was dragged by plain-clothes policemen to a dark, trash-filled
alley in northern Manila before he was shot in the head and left next to
a pigsty, according to witnesses whose accounts appeared to be backed
up by CCTV footage.
Police say they acted in self defense after
delos Santos opened fire on them, and Duterte's spokesman and the
justice minister have described the killing of the teenager as an
"isolated" case.-Reuters
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