“President Duterte can’t be expected to investigate himself, so it is crucial that the United Nations is called in to lead such an effort”, Adams said.
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“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”, Mr Matobato told MPs under oath said under oath, adding some of the targets were not criminals but opponents of Mr Duterte and one of his sons in Davao city.
According to the Philippines national police, almost 3,000 drug-related killings have been reported since Duterte assumed office June 30.
Matobato provided explicit details of alleged killings, including one in which a victim was fed to a crocodile.
He also said that other opponents of Duterte were garroted, burned, quartered and then buried in a quarry while others were dumped at sea to be eaten by fish. “That’s the kind of people what we kill everyday”, Matobato said.
Matobato testified the DDS killed alleged drug dealers and criminals in the southern city of Davao, on the order of Duterte when he was mayor, between 1988 and 2013. “Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off”, Matobato said, saying Duterte emptied two magazines from an Uzi firearm into the man.
“The Commission on Human Rights already investigated this a long time ago and no charges were filed”, he said.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre described Matobato’s testimony as “all lies and fabrication”.
Testifying before the Senate committee on August 23, dela Rosa said that local police “follow the rule of law”, and that there was no shoot-to-kill order despite the growing toll of bodies piling up in the wake of Duterte’s crackdown.
Senators Panfilo Lacson, Aquilino Pimentel and Alan Peter Cayetano were among numerous lawmakers who said the witness could not be taken seriously.
Since his election this year more than 3,000 drug users and dealers have been killed amid worldwide alarm over human rights violations.
Matobato said the death squad had tortured him when he asked to leave the group, prompting him to surrender to the justice department’s witness protection programme.
Paolo Duterte issued a statement dismissing Matobato’s testimony as “all based on hearsays”.
“I saw some clips…they should have not quarreled”.
Matobato said that militiamen were in position to ambush Lima near a suspected grave.
Mr Duterte served as mayor of Davao for 22 years.
Yet on the day he was sworn into office, Duterte gave a speech to a crowd in a Manila slum in which he called on them to kill drug addicts in their own community.
“So, what this witness told the public was that it’s not entirely true that it’s just a war against crime because there were victims that were actually personal rivals of Duterte”, Trillanes added.
Mr Matobato even claimed he was part of a squad sent by Mr Duterte to assassinate Ms de Lima in 2009, when she was investigating the allegations as chair of the Commission on Human Rights.
Matobato said that in the 1990s he had overheard Rodrigo Duterte order the bombing of mosques in Davao as retaliation for an attack on a cathedral.
“They have to come up with other accusations against the President”. Cayetano suggested that the entire investigation regarding extrajudicial killings was a politically motivated “plan B” orchestrated by the president’s enemies.
It said “there is no evidence to support the killings attributed to or attributable to the DDS”.
During a following visit to Washington, however, Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. underlined Thursday that the US should not lecture the Philippines on human rights.
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“It’s scary because I could be next”, said the gaunt, gap-toothed 28-year-old, speaking on the condition his identity not be revealed for security reasons.
