The Davao City Police chief has belied the testimony of a witness who introduced himself as a former hitman of the alleged Davao Death Squad (DDS) linking President Rodrigo Duterte and several police officials to extrajudicial killings.
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While his key officials have played down the allegations and questioned the credibility of the witness, Duterte himself has not directly reacted to the statements made by Edgar Matobato in the nationally televised Senate inquiry.
Matobato said he spent years working as part of the so-called “Davao Death Squad”, a group of killers associated with the president’s time as a city mayor.
Since his election more than 3,000 drug users and dealers have been killed in police operations or by vigilantes, according to the authorities, amid global alarm over human rights violations.
Matobato told the Senate panel he was one of the hitmen of the Davao Death Squad that was established by Duterte, and their only job was to kill suspected criminals and the personal enemies of the Duterte family.
He said others were thrown into the sea, their stomach slashed to prevent bodies floating to the surface, he said. Leila de Lima, a senator who was heading the panel investigating Duterte’s drugs war, said that while she agreed Matobato could be wrong about some dates, she did not believe he was lying.
Matobato said the victims in Davao allegedly ranged from petty criminals to a wealthy businessman from central Cebu province who was killed in 2014 in his office in Davao city, allegedly because of a feud with Paolo Duterte over a woman.
Duterte aides said the government’s Commission on Human Rights had already investigated the allegations but did not file charges while his son, Paolo Duterte, called the testimony “mere hearsay” of “a madman”. Among other allegations, Matobato asserted Duterte once personally shot a government agent dead with an Uzi submachine gun. He said he chose to tell what he knew about the Davao death squads after being made a “fall guy” in the killing of a businessman in the city.
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. “I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders”, Andanar said, according to the BBC.
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”.
The presidential palace has denied the latest accusations against Duterte.
He said that the squad operated with the tacit approval of the Davao police.
‘The officers told us ordinary killings won’t do.
Former congressman Prospero Nograles also called Matobato a liar, saying four of the men he claimed to have killed were still alive.
A confrontation led to as hoot out that left the agent wounded and out of bullets.
He left the protection programme when Mr Duterte became president, fearing he would be killed, and said he had chose to speak up “so the killings will stop”.
He said the country’s Commission on Human Rights had failed to even prove the existence of the Davao Death Squad.
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He promised to kill tens of thousands of criminals to wipe out crime and rid the country of illegal drugs within six months of his presidency.
