In the Philippines, more than 1,700 former prisoners, who had been released prematurely due to good conduct, are threatened with returning to prison. The police appealed on Thursday to the ex-prisoners to stand up. Police chief Oscar Albayalde threatened that they would otherwise be treated as "fugitives".
President Rodrigo Duterte had previously reversed the dismissals of the prison inmates by decree. He accused the dismissal authority of corruption. The head of the agency, Nicanor Faeldon, was released.
The scandal surrounding dismissed prisoners intensified after it became known last month that a former mayor should be released early in prison for murdering a student and her boyfriend.
Later, Faeldon was forced to admit that three other men, who were arrested in 1997 for the rape and murder of two sisters, are already on the loose.