LGBT group slams early release of killer in Manila

Protests were held on Thursday following a Philippine court's decision to order the early release for good conduct of a US Marine convicted in the 2014 killing of a transgender Filipino woman.

The Regional Trial Court Branch 74's ordered for the release of Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton on Tuesday.

Pemberton has served six years of a maximum 10-year jail term, mostly in a compound jointly guarded by Philippine and American security personnel at the main military camp in Manila.

In December 2015, a judge convicted Pemberton of homicide, not the more serious charge of murder as prosecutors sought.

The Olongapo court judge said at the time that she downgraded the charge because factors such as cruelty and treachery had not been proven.

Pemberton, an anti-tank missile operator from New Bedford, Massachusetts, was one of thousands of American and Philippine military personnel who participated in joint exercises in the country in 2014.

He and a group of other Marines were on leave after the exercises and met Jennifer Laude and her friends at a bar in Olongapo, a city known for its nightlife outside Subic Bay, a former US Navy base.

Laude was later found dead, her head slumped in a toilet bowl in a motel room, where witnesses said she and Pemberton had checked in.

A witness told investigators that Pemberton said he choked Laude after discovering she was transgender.

The killing reignited calls from left-wing groups and nationalists for an end to America's military presence in the Philippines at a time when the US was reasserting its role in Asia, and Manila had turned to Washington for support amid an escalating territorial dispute with China.