MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking, Philippine officials said Tuesday.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He will be replaced by another senior police general, Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. who assumed the top post Tuesday.
In a letter to Torre made public Tuesday, Bersamin informed him of his immediate removal as national police chief on orders of Marcos and directed him “to ensure the proper turnover of all matters, documents and information relative to your office.”
Torre was not immediately available for comment.
Ahead of his removal, Torre reportedly had differences with government officials over the national police chief’s decision to remove more than a dozen police officials from their posts, including Nartatez. The National Police Commission ordered the reinstatement of the police officials to their posts this month but that was apparently not immediately done.
“He did not violate any laws, he has not been charged criminally or administratively, it is simply a choice of the president to take a new direction for the national police,” Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said without elaborating in a news conference when asked why Torre was removed.
Marcos and Torre had a “wonderful and productive relationship,” Remulla said, but he added without elaborating that “we are a country of laws and not of men, that the institutions must be larger than the people who run it.”
Only the president can specifically answer why Torre was removed, Remulla said. It’s not clear if Torre would be offered another government post.
Just a few days ago, Torre demonstrated to Marcos a new anti-crime battle room in the national police headquarters where officers could rapidly communicate by two-way radio and other communications system to respond to any law and order problem in five minutes or less.
In March, Torre led the chaotic arrest of Duterte at Manila’s international airport and his handover to International Criminal Court detention in the Netherlands for his deadly antidrug crackdowns. Duterte, who ended his six-year presidential term in 2022, has been accused of a crime against humanity for the brutal campaign against illegal drugs when he was in office and which left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead in police-enforced crackdowns that alarmed the United States, other Western governments and human rights watchdogs.
Duterte has denied ordering the executions of drug suspects but has publicly threatened to have suspected drug traffickers killed while he was a longtime mayor of southern Davao city and later as president.
Last year, Torre oversaw the arrest of Philippine religious leader Apollo Quiboloy, a key Duterte supporter who was placed on the FBI’s most-wanted list after being indicted for sexual abuses and trafficking of underage girls in the U.S. Torre, then regional police chief of the southern Davao region, led thousands of policemen who confronted large numbers of Quiboloy’s followers opposing the religious leader’s arrest in his vast religious complex in southern Davao city.
Quiboloy and his lawyers have denied the charges.
Quiboloy has been locked up since then in a metropolitan Manila jail for three criminal cases similar to his cases in the U.S., which Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said has sought his extradition.
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