The Philippines’ firebrand President Rodrigo Duterte swept to power last year vowing to rid his country of drugs-related crime. Instead the streets he pledged to clean have run with the blood of over 7000 citizens murdered in an outbreak of vigilante violence.

A report released on Tuesday by human rights group Amnesty International appears to confirm what many had feared – that the police may be complicit in this breakdown of justice, killing suspected drugs users rather than allowing them recourse to the courts.

The 68-page report, based on the testimonies of self-proclaimed paid killers, an unidentified police officer and multiple eye-witnesses, is damning.

It claims not only that professional assassins are on the police payroll, but that officers themselves receive financial rewards to kill suspects in extrajudicial executions.

The allegations should come as little surprise. “Duterte Harry” has boasted of personally killing criminal suspects when he was mayor of the southern city of Davao, and has promised to support officers accused of unlawful killing.