Philippine authorities arrest church leader charged with sex trafficking

Apollo Quiboloy, an state of ex-President Duterte, is facing kid enactment trafficking charges successful the Philippines and the US.

An influential Filipino pastor charged with enactment trafficking who had been a longtime state of erstwhile Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested by authorities, the authorities said.

Department of Interior Secretary Benhur Abalos announced the apprehension of Apollo Quiboloy successful a little societal media station connected Sunday. He did not accidental wherever the pastor was arrested.

But the self-proclaimed “owner of the universe” and “appointed lad of God” was believed to beryllium hiding successful a bunker astatine a sprawling compound owned by his church, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC), successful the confederate metropolis of Davao, Duterte’s stronghold.

In a property conference, Nicolas Torre, determination constabulary manager successful Davao, confirmed the apprehension of Quiboloy. He said helium was informed that Quiboloy surrendered to authorities.

In June this year, the Philippine Department of Justice charged the pastor with enactment maltreatment prompting a tribunal to contented his apprehension warrant. Five different members of his religion were besides charged with qualified quality trafficking and different acts of kid abuse.

Earlier connected Sunday, the authorities deployed astatine slightest 3,000 constabulary officers to the religion compound, wherever authorities person been conducting an cognition for the past 2 weeks.

Duterte and his allies had criticised attempts by ample numbers of constabulary to apprehension Quiboloy arsenic an overkill.

When helium was politician of Davao City, and aboriginal arsenic president, Duterte often appeared connected Quiboloy’s tv presumption to beforehand his police-enforced cause crackdowns, which near thousands of mostly mediocre suspects dead.

The pastor said his concern successful the Philippines “got complicated” aft President Ferdinand Marcos Jr came to powerfulness successful 2022.

He alleged that Marcos’s authorities had “conspired” with the agencies successful the United States – FBI and CIA – to “hand maine implicit to the Americans”.

Quiboloy had earlier demanded a warrant from the authorities successful speech for his surrender that helium would not beryllium extradited.

He said if his demands were met, helium “will look and woody with each those cases, nary substance wherever you bring them, present successful the Philippines”.

In 2021, the US Department of Justice charged Quiboloy with enactment trafficking of girls and women aged 12 to 25 to enactment arsenic idiosyncratic assistants, oregon “pastorals”, who were allegedly required to person enactment with him.

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies