A number of police officers in the Philippines have been relieved of their duties after a TV station aired footage allegedly showing them torturing a naked detainee.
The detained man is believed to be a suspected thief caught in Manila's Tondo slum district, according to ABS-CBN TV, which said it obtained the cell phone footage from an unidentified informer.
The man's fate and when the video was taken were unclear.
He has his genitals bound and a police officer allegedly pulling on a rope attached to them as he writhes in agony
The detainee is believed to be a thief. His fate is unknown
The footage shows him screaming on the floor in a foetal position with his genitals bound with a rope and a man pulling on it as well as whipping him.
'Snatching is not allowed here,' the man beating the detainee can be heard saying, while a uniformed officer stands by and watches.
Metropolitan Manila police chief Leocadio Santiago relieved the 11-member police station Wednesday and ordered that its commander, Senior Inspector Joselito Binayug, be investigated for criminal acts.
The maximum penalty under an anti-torture law passed last year is 40 years in prison if the victim dies.
'We are holding Binayug responsible. We will be filing charges for dereliction of duty but we want something heavier,' Santiago told reporters.
Binayug could not be reached for comment as the precinct does not have a working phone and the chief did not provide his phone number.
It is not clear if the ten others will also face charges, but that will be part of the investigation, police said.
New officers were assigned to the precinct under investigation.
President Benigno Aquino III said torture is not a government policy. Asked about the incident at a news conference, Aquino said 'the police also are entitled to their day in court and to due process'.
Coco Quisumbing, an official of the Commission on Human Rights, which said it would separately investigate the torture allegations, said she was aghast after seeing police officers in the video seemingly showing indifference.
Amnesty International researcher Hazel Galang said the incident can serve as a test case for the country's anti-torture law and the Aquino government's determination to implement it.
'Tomorrow is the 50th day of the Aquino presidency and in the first 50 days we've already seen torture cases, we've seen extra-judicial killings,' she said. 'We will keep on watching.'
It was not the first time that video footage allegedly of police torture has surfaced in the country.
Earlier this year, a police colonel was seen punching a suspect whose face was covered with a plastic bag, and recently, another video showed three handcuffed teenage boys with two of them being forced to kiss each other.
The colonel in the video was relieved and placed under investigation while the probe into the other case was incomplete because there were no witnesses and the boys did not file a complaint, police said.
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