Panelo: Robredo 'misled, misinformed, misguided' on war on drugs

MANILA - Vice-President Leni Robredo has been receiving wrong information about the Duterte administration's war on drugs, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo said Wednesday.

Panelo called Robredo's claims about human rights violations in the war on drugs as "groundless" and "having no basis in fact and in law."

"It is unfortunate that the vice president has made statements vis-a-vis the so-called war on drugs has been the result of police operations and extrajudicial killings initiated allegedly by the state. This is absolutely groundless and has no basis in fact and in law," he said.

"I think the vice president, I'm sorry to say, has been misled, has been misinformed and has been misguided on the information she has received," Panelo added.

Panelo also explained the "palit-ulo" scheme, challenging Robredo's claims.

• WATCH: Robredo reveals 'palit-ulo' scheme in war on drugs

"The palit-ulo scheme as I know as a lawyer, the police officers, when they arrest a pusher, they will hold that pusher in exchange for the one in detention, temporarily, to point to the source of the drugs that they have confiscated from that pusher, and so forth and so on until they reach the source. That is the palit-ulo system and certainly not innocent people being arrested just because you cannot find the person you want to arrest or question," he said.

Robredo, in a recorded speech uploaded on YouTube by anti-drug network DRCNet Foundation, revealed the so-called "palit-ulo" scheme allegedly used by law-enforcement agencies.

"They told us of the 'palit-ulo scheme' which literally means exchange heads where the wife or husband or relative of a person in a so-called drug list will be taken if the person himself could not be found," she said.

Panelo, meanwhile, denied that police are behind drug-related summary killings.

"We can only appeal to the vice president's sense to study more, to listen more to what is the reality on the ground. It is not sure, as she stated in her video, this is the result, the extrajudicial killings, are the result of police operations. Not necessarily true. Some of them, yes, but most of them are coming from the infighting in between the members of the syndicate because the others want to silence those who surrendered, and those who surrendered want to defend themselves. That's why there are more extrajudicial killings resulting from that, rather from the police operations," he explained.