“Let me say that the Philippines Foreign Minister and its defense ministry have issued statements… affirming the importance of the closeness of the alliance”, said Nina Hachigian, the United States ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
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Victims would be shot or strangled, he said, with some disembowelled and dumped into the sea so fish could eat them, or in one case fed to a crocodile.
Matobato said Mr. Duterte also ordered the death squad to kill De Lima, when she chaired the Commission on Human Rights and was investigating the mayor’s possible role in the extrajudicial killings in Davao in 2009.
President Barack Obama, U.N. officials and human rights watchdogs have raised concerns over the widespread killings, but Duterte has lashed back at them and other critics.
More than 700,000 users and pushers have already “surrendered”, including local officials, rogue policemen, military Generals whom Duterte included in his long list of drug users, pushers and protectors.
He has denied the claims, even while engaging in tough talk in which he stated his approach to criminals was to “kill them all”. He said that the squad operated with the tacit approval of the Davao police.
“The people of Davao were being slaughtered like chicken”, he said, adding the death squad killed mainly criminal suspects and personal enemies of the Duterte family between 1988 and 2013.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez of the House of Representatives, a close Duterte ally, also weighed in on the issue, calling Matobato as a “recycled witness” of Senator Leila de Lima, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights, that conducted the hearing.
He also told the Senate committee that he had witnessed Duterte gun down one target who had momentarily managed to survive an attack at a roadblock involving over 20 victims.
Philippine human rights officials and advocates have previously said potential witnesses refused to testify against Duterte when he was still mayor out of fear of being killed.
“I’ve denied the request for protective custody of the witness (Edgar) Matobato because there is no Senate rule to justify it”, he said.
“We’ll be tackling this on Monday, but in the meantime we’ll just have to find ways to make sure that our witness will be protected”, Sen.
An estimated 3000 suspected drug dealers have have been killed by police or vigilantes since Mr Duterte came to power in late June promising a war on the drug trade.
Motabato’s testimony were “based on lies, falsities, (and) fabrications” such that Mr. Duterte didn’t bother to respond at all to the allegations during his speech in Bulacan delivered in front of the First Scout Ranger Regiment (FSRR).
A spokesman for Duterte and several of his supporters have cast doubt on the credibility of Matobato’s testimony.
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.
The report said impunity for such crimes in Davao and elsewhere was “nearly total”.
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Caesar Europa said Matobato’s statements corroborated his client’s claim that he was innocent. He said he chose to surface now because “I wanted the people to know so the killings will stop”.
