Mr. Duterte, who has made it clear to his supporters and opponents from the get-go that he is no ordinary politician – uncouth, brutally frank and even murderous at times – declared an independent course for the Philippines on Saturday after a spectacular falling out with US President Barack Obama that became the buzz at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Laos last week.
Advertisement
“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”, he said. The Philippine Commission on Human Rights said that from 2005 to 2009, the Davao Death Squad had killed 206 people, including 107 who had criminal records or were suspected of crimes.
Matobato said that for more than 20 years, Duterte ordered the deaths of almost 1,000 criminal and political rivals, even claiming that Duterte “finished off” a justice department agent with an Uzi submachine gun.
Government officials have forcefully rejected the allegations, with Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre calling the man’s testimony “lies, fabrications and a product of a fertile and a coached imagination”, Reuters reports.
Rights groups have long accused Duterte of involvement in death squads, claims he has denied, even while engaging in tough talk in which he stated his approach to criminals was to “kill them all”.
Victims’ bodies were mutilated and then dumped on the side of the road.
“I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders”, Andanar said, according to the BBC.
“We wasted one full day to hear a witness who did not make a relevant contribution to the Senate resolution”, Pimentel, a close Duterte ally, told GMA News.
“He (Mr Duterte) emptied two Uzi magazines on him”.
Senator Leila De Lima, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights which is conducting a probe on the spate of extrajudicial killings and summary executions related to the government’s “war on drugs” said “more than 58 percent” of the killings are identified as vigilante killings. “Give me a little extension, maybe of another six months”, he said. He said Duterte ordered the hit squad to abduct and kill Muslims, whom they buried in a quarry owned by a police officer.
He also argued the claims of De Lima that there were now 3,526 fatalities in the drug war, saying there are only 1,506 killed during Duterte’s term. Human-rights groups have demanded investigations and global attention to the murders, saying he’s connected to 1,400 killings as mayor of Davao.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”, said the 57-year-old, adding he himself had killed more than 50 people while working for a “Davao Death Squad”.
Paolo Duterte issued a statement dismissing Matobato’s testimony as “all based on hearsays”.
Human-rights groups have also called Duterte the “Death Squad Mayor”, a moniker he seemingly embraced in May during the election, saying in televised remarks, “Am I the death squad?”
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.
Senators Panfilo Lacson, Aquilino Pimentel and Alan Peter Cayetano were among numerous lawmakers who said the witness could not be taken seriously. “They are sadists”, he said, describing how the victims were strangled.
Advertisement
He left the protection program when Duterte became president, fearing he would be killed, and said he chose to surface now “so the killings will stop”.
