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MANILA: 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 Remulla to reinstate 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.
Only the president can answer why Torre was removed, Remulla said without providing details. 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 US Torre 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 US, which Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said has sought his extradition.

VINH, Vietnam: The death toll from Typhoon Kajiki rose to three in Vietnam on Tuesday, as rescue workers battled uprooted trees and downed power lines and widespread flooding brought chaos to the streets of the capital Hanoi.
The typhoon hit central Vietnam on Monday with winds of up to 130kph, tearing roofs off thousands of homes and knocking out power to more than 1.6 million people.
Authorities on Tuesday said three people had been killed and 13 injured, and warned of possible flash floods and landslides in eight provinces as Kajiki’s torrential rains continue to wreak havoc.
On the streets of Vinh, in central Vietnam, AFP journalists saw soldiers and rescue workers using cutting equipment to clear dozens of trees and roof panels that had blocked the roads.
“A huge steel roof was blown down from the eighth floor of a building, landing right in the middle of the street,” Tran Van Hung, 65, said.
“It was so lucky that no one was hurt. This typhoon was absolutely terrifying.”
Vietnam has long been affected by seasonal typhoons, but human-caused climate change is driving more intense and unpredictable weather patterns.
This can make destructive floods and storms more likely, particularly in the tropics.
“The wind yesterday night was so strong. The sound from trees twisting and the noise of the flying steel panels were all over the place,” Vinh resident Nguyen Thi Hoa, 60, said.
“We are used to heavy rain and floods but I think I have never experienced that strong wind and its gust like this yesterday.”
Flooding has cut off 27 villages in mountainous areas inland, authorities said, while more than 44,000 people were evacuated as the storm approached.
Further north in Hanoi, the heavy rains left many streets under water, bringing traffic chaos on Tuesday morning.
“It was impossible to move around this morning. My front yard is also flooded,” Nguyen Thuy Lan, 44, said.
Another Hanoi resident, Tran Luu Phuc, said he was stuck in one place for more than an hour, unable to escape the logjam of vehicles trapped by the murky brown waters.
“The flooding and the traffic this morning are terrible. It’s a big mess everywhere,” he said.
After hitting Vietnam and weakening to a tropical depression, Kajiki swept westwards over northern Laos, bringing intense rains.
The high-speed Laos-China railway halted all services on Monday and Tuesday, and some roads have been cut, but there were no immediate reports of deaths.
In Vietnam, more than 100 people have been killed or left missing from natural disasters in the first seven months of 2025, according to the agriculture ministry.
In September last year Typhoon Yagi battered northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, triggering floods and landslides that left more than 700 people dead and causing billions of dollars’ worth of economic losses.