He said he himself carried out about 50 of the abductions and deadly assaults, including that of a suspected kidnapper who was fed to a crocodile in 2007 in Davao del Sur province.
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Numerous victims were abducted by members of the group who introduced themselves as police officers, then taken to a local quarry where they were killed and buried, he added. Others were dumped at sea to be eaten by fish.
“Among others, Matobato claimed that as a member for 24 years of the “Davao Death Squad” (DDS), he witnessed or had participated in the “vigilante” killings” allegedly on orders of Duterte when he was the Davao City mayor.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre called the allegations “lies and fabrications”, adding Matobato “is obviously not telling the truth”.
Duterte’s spokesman, Martin Andanar, has however denied these allegations saying, “I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders”.
Thursday’s hearing was led by Duterte’s long-time critic, Senator Leila de Lima, who is also chairwoman of the committee on justice and human rights.
Matobato recounted a 1993 death squad mission that was unintentionally impeded by the vehicle of an agent of the justice department’s National Bureau of Investigation that was blocking a road on the southern city of Davao.
He explained: ‘Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off.
The witness told the Senate that former Vice Mayor of Davao and Duterte’s son, Paulo Duterte, also ordered killings.
“Our work was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”. That’s what we did.
Edgar Motabato told a televised hearing of the Philippines Senate on Thursday that he was among members of a squad who took four of Mr Duterte’s political rivals to the island of Samalin in 2010, where they were placed in sand and strangled.
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.
For their part, Mr. Nograles and his son, incumbent congressman Karlo Alexei B. Nograles, said they were not aware of any supporters killed.
In this group, 5067 P1 teachers in Job Group G will be promoted to Group H.
Duterte ran for president this year promising to do for the Philippines what he had done for Davao: clear out the drug addicts, round up the criminals, and clean the city of corruption. De Lima’s team came to check the supposed mass grave.
Human rights groups estimate the group killed some 1,400 suspected criminals since the early 1990s.
In 2013, Matobato said, he tried to leave the death squad.
He said the death squad had received orders either directly from Duterte or from active-duty Davao police officers assigned to the mayor’s office.
“They were killed like chickens”, said Matobato, who added he backed away from the killings after feeling guilty and entered a government witness-protection program.
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. “I was tortured for a week”, Matobato said, offering this betrayal as the reason for coming forward now.
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America needs to take action against Duterte to protect itself and also the citizens of the Philippines.
