Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte may be surrounded by a fresh controversy after a former militiaman testified against him Thursday in front of the country’s Senate, saying the former Davao City mayor ordered the killings of nearly 1,000 criminals and political opponents, as well as the bombing of a mosque in 1993.
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Philippine human rights officials and advocates have previously said potential witnesses refused to testify against Mr Duterte when he was still mayor out of fear of being killed. “He emptied two Uzi magazines on him”.
Presidential spokesman Martin Andanar rejected the allegations, saying government investigations into Mr Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao had already gone nowhere because of a lack of evidence and witnesses.
Matobato said the victims in Davao ranged from petty criminals to people associated with Duterte’s political opponents, and included a wealthy businessman who was killed in central Cebu province because of a feud with Duterte’s son over a woman.
He was credited with cleaning up crime in the city with his violent tactics – a legacy that helped him get elected as president of the island nation.
“Our job was to kill criminals, rapists, pushers, and snatchers”.
At the time of the orders, Duterte was mayor of Davao City, then a chaotic but now a bustling urban center in the Philippines’ south.
Matobato hurled a grenade at one mosque but said no one was wounded because the attack took place when no one was praying.
De Lima – who has been extremely vocal in criticizing Duterte’s controversial war on illegal drugs – has been accused, meanwhile, of collecting money from drug personalities through an alleged lover to support her senatorial bid in last May elections. More than 3,500 suspected drug users and dealers have been killed on the streets in the Philippines since Duterte took office – some shot by police, others killed under unclear circumstances, possibly by vigilantes.
The killings have sparked outrage in the global community, including from President Barack Obama, who urged Duterte to comply with human rights law.
Other victims were a suspected foreign terrorist, who Matobato said he strangled then chopped into pieces and buried in a quarry in 2002.
But he also claimed that Mr Duterte’s opponents were targeted too, including four bodyguards of a local rival for mayor, Prospero Nograles. Matubato said he has killed more or less 50 persons. “Kill them all [criminals]”.
When the Philippines Commission of Human Rights launched an investigation into the Davao killings in 2009, Duterte allegedly ordered the DDS to kill the Commission’s Chairman Leila de Lima, according to Matobato.
And, in his testimony, he implicated Duterte’s son Paolo, who is now Vice Mayor of Davao.
“The people of Davao were being slaughtered like chicken”, he said, adding the death squad killed mainly criminal suspects and personal enemies of the Duterte family between 1988 and 2013.
Matobato told the hearing he once served as a paramilitary who fought Maoist rebels and chose to tell all that he knew about the Davao death squad after being made a “fall guy” in the killing of a Davao businessman.
Matobato’s testimony set off a tense exchange between senators allied with Duterte and those critical of him.
Matobato said the death squad “tortured” him when he asked to leave the group in 2013, prompting him to surrender to the justice department’s witness protection program.
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“You can be jailed with your revelations”, Lacson said. I’ve been a member of Congress for 18 years, hind po kami ini-i-interrupt ng chairman pag kami na ang nagsasalita, pag kami na po ang magtatanong, ” Cayetano said.
