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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Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre also echoed him, calling the allegations “lies and fabrications”.
He alleged that in 1993, the vigilante group had injured a justice department agent after a confrontation at a road block.
She and Philippine human rights advocates have previously said that potential witnesses refused to testify against the President when he was mayor because they were afraid they would be killed.
But if there is one thing that could still alarm the worldwide community about Duterte’s past, it might just be allegations that he once executed a Philippine Justice Department employee with an Uzi submachine gun. “He emptied two Uzi magazines on him”, Mr Matobato said.
The Nograles clan threw its support behind Duterte in the May 2016 presidential elections after years of rivalry.
Duterte’s tenure as the mayor of Davao from 1988 to 2013 saw around 1,000 deaths.
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.
“We kill those types every day”, Matobato, 57, told a televised Philippine Senate hearing in Manila, adding that he and others of the alleged Davao Death Squad killed about 1,000 people in a 25-year-period.
The man testifying Thursday, Edgar Matobato, says he was a member of a death squad and that he killed about 50 people.
Wilnor Papa, a campaign officer for the Manila office of Amnesty International, said the problem of impunity was coming to a head partly due to the failure of previous governments, which failed to prosecute Duterte.
Matobato also revealed that on another occasion, Duterte had asked them to attack a mosque in Davao and kill Muslims, following an explosion at the city’s cathedral.
Duterte’s promise during his presidential campaign to pursue his antidrug push nationally has alarmed human rights groups, which fear that extrajudicial killings are eroding the rule of law in the Philippines, an important USA ally in Asia.
Edgar Matobato revealed that he was recruited by Duterte as a member of the Lambado Boys in the late 1980s.
Rights groups have long accused Mr Duterte of involvement in death squads while he was mayor of Davao city.
He said he and fellow assassins referred to then-mayor Duterte using the code name, “Charlie Mike”, and he ordered them to kill dozens of people ranging from drug pushers, to the dance-instructor boyfriend of Duterte’s sister, to a millionaire hotelier.
He told the Senate panel he went from a witness protection programme into hiding when Mr Duterte became president, fearing for his life. He said that prompted his colleagues to implicate him criminally in one killing to silence him.
The self-confessed former DDS member was presented to the Senate hearing on extrajudicial killings in the Philippines by De Lima, a known critic of Duterte’s.
Mr Duterte has immunity from lawsuits as a president, but Ms de Lima said that principle may have to be revisited now. A number of reports suggested that more than 900 suspected drug traffickers have been killed since Duterte came to power on 9 May.
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In June, after winning the presidency he effectively sanctioned the public killing of drug suspects, telling a rally “if you destroy my country, I will kill you”.
