3 U.S. Agents Charged in Philippines Slayings

The Philippines military filed murder charges Wednesday against three American drug agents and 13 Filipino police officers in the killings of three soldiers, two of them officers, during an alleged drug bust last month.

Brig. Gen. Gerardo Flores, chief of staff of the Philippine Constabulary, said charges were filed against Philip Needham of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Bangkok office, Andrew Fenrich, head of the DEA section in Manila, and another DEA agent, Jake Fernandez.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Stanley Schrager said all three have left the country and “have no plans to return.”

In Washington, acting DEA Administrator Terrence Burke rejected the allegations, saying in a statement: “These charges have no merit.”

DEA spokesman Joe Keefe said the Philippines government allows DEA agents to carry firearms, but he added: “None of the weapons was fired on that day.”

In a report to the provincial prosecutor, the Constabulary’s Judge Advocate Office said it was unclear whether the DEA agents fired any shots because they refused to submit their weapons to ballistics tests.

But the report said the Americans were clearly involved and therefore criminally liable.

The charges stem from a July 10 incident in which Col. Rolando de Guzman, deputy chief of the Northern Luzon Command, his intelligence officer, Maj. Frank Calanog, and another soldier were slain during what police said was a shoot-out during a drug bust.

According to the National Bureau of Investigation, De Guzman and the other soldiers tried to sell $10-million worth of heroin to Needham, who was posing as a buyer. Shooting broke out when the three resisted arrest.

The DEA suggested that the murder charges could have been intended to prevent the U.S. agents from testifying before a commission about drug trafficking by Filipino military officials.

DEA spokesman Cornelius Dougherty said in Washington that the agency had been invited to testify before the commission.

Fenrich had planned to testify until the charges were filed Wednesday, Dougherty said. The charges “put the kibosh on any testimony about the facts concerning the armed forces,” Dougherty said.