A witness in a Senate hearing on the extra-judicial killings in the Philippines has testified that he was a member of a death squad in the home city of President Rodrigo Duterte, and that the then-mayor himself ordered the killings of crime and drug suspects as well as the bombing of a mosque in Davao City.
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The committee meeting was released by the office of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez just hours after the Senate conducted an inquiry on extrajudicial killings which heard the testimony of self-confessed Davao Death Squad (DDS) hitman Edgar Matobato.
“Our work was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”.
“Jamisola [the justice department official] was still alive when he [Duterte] arrived”.
The allegations making headlines on Thursday relate to Duterte’s long tenure as mayor of Davao City, before he was president.
But he said their targets were not only criminals but also opponents of Duterte and one of his sons, Paolo Duterte, who is now the vice mayor of Davao. Duterte corrected him: it was 1,700, he said.
In May 2015 before he ran for president, Duterte admitted links to the reported Davao Death Squad. “Those were the people we killed every day”, Matobato said before a Philippines committee investigating extrajudicial killings.
The United Nations and United States have expressed concern about his latest crackdown, and received profane and angry rebukes from Duterte, who has told them not to interfere. “Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off”, Matobato said, saying Duterte emptied two magazines from an Uzi firearm into the man.
“It seems like he wants to avenge the bombing of the cathedral”, he said in Filipino referring to Duterte, who allegedly also ordered to grab and kill “Muslim” suspects, and “bury them in a quarry”.
On this claim, Mr Duterte’s spokesman, Martin Andanar, said “I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders”.
Duterte himself has not commented on the testimony, the AP says.
In 2012, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights recommended to government prosecutors to file murder charges against Duterte.
“They were killed like chickens”, said Matobato, who added he that backed away from the killings after feeling guilty and entered a government witness-protection program.
Alvarez said, however, that the House probe does not intend to single out De Lima, who refused to attend the probe.
Rights groups have documented some 1,400 suspicious killings in Davao since the early 1990s and critics say the bloody war on drugs Duterte has unleashed since taking office on June 30 bears the same hallmarks.
In her statement, Vice-President Maria Leonor G. Robredo said allegations raised by Mr. Motabato are “serious” and all efforts must be exhausted “to get to the truth with due regard for our democratic processes and the rule of law”.
But he also said that Mr Duterte’s opponents had been targeted too, including four bodyguards of a local rival for mayor, Prospero Nograles.
Ms. Robredo also said she was “offended by Senator Cayetano’s accusation that the Liberal Party is plotting to oust the President and that I will be the intended beneficiary of this plan”.
In his testimony, Matobato said he was the triggerman of at least 50 of the murders in Davao. In a speech on Thursday he made no mention of the senate hearing.
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In a separate news report, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte also denied the allegations, calling the witness a “madman”.
