Palace wants 'heartless' SAF overkill video taken down

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang on Wednesday slammed the person who made public the video of the brutal killing of a police commando during the January 25 operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.

Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda appealed to the uploader of the video, which has gone viral on social media, to remove it from the web.

"Whoever uploaded that video is a heartless fellow. And if you still have some humanity left in your soul, we ask you to take it down," Lacieda said in a press briefing.

The six-minute footage spreading on social media showed a supposed member of the Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) who had an armed "misencounter" with fighters from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

In the video, the wounded SAF trooper could be seen being shot more than once until he was dead.

Lacierda said Filipinos have a right to be angry over the video but he stressed the need to determine the truth amid all the emotions.

"We have right to be outraged by such brutal display of violence. But at the end of the day, we need to seek the truth. We need to find justice for all of those who died including the SAF hero who was in that video," Lacierda told reporters.

Forty-four SAF troopers were killed in the hands of the MILF and its breakaway group, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters during the police operation to capture Malaysian Zulkifli Bin Hir, alias Marwan, and Filipino Abdul Basit Usman, both bomb experts linked to the terror group Jemaah Islamiya.

The MILF leadership had insisted that their fighters only acted on self-defense when they engaged in a fire fight with the elite cops.