But Mr. dela Rosa, who was at Thursday’s hearing, said of Mr. Matobato: “This is the first time that I see this person”.
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“We’d remove their clothes, burn the bodies and chop them up”, he said.
Other victims were a suspected foreign militant whom Mr Matobato said he strangled, then chopped into pieces and buried in a quarry in 2002.
Numerous others were garroted, burned, quartered and then buried at a quarry owned by a police officer who was a member of the death squad.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”, he said.
But he added that the targets were not always criminals.
Mr Matobato, 57, said he had been a member of the Davao Death Squad, a notorious vigilante group allegedly responsible for hundreds of killings.
The witness said they would sometimes be ordered to kill even non-criminals, citing the killing of bodyguards of then mayoral candidate Prospero Nograles who ran against Duterte in 2010. Duterte himself also promised before his inauguration that the Philippines would continue to maintain the treaties. Matobato also accused the president of shooting dead a justice department employee in 1993, when he was a city mayor.
President Rodrigo R. Duterte said if anyone wants to criticize or lecture him about human rights issues in connection with his anti-drug war campaign, they should not do so in public. According to US defense officials, the American military won’t cease operations in the Philippines or pull out of the country unless it receives a formal request from the government, which hasn’t arrived. “He emptied two Uzi (submachine gun) magazines on him”.
“Then we’d remove their clothes, burn the bodies and chop them up”, Matobato said, adding that he had personally killed “about 50” people.
He told the Senate panel he went from a witness protection programme into hiding when Mr Duterte became president, fearing for his life.
“I don’t know what this guy is talking about”, he said, referring to Mr Motabato.
The ongoing Senate hearing was called to assess Duterte’s anti-drug campaign that has left over 3,000 suspected drug users and dealers dead in the past few months, since Duterte assumed presidency at the end of June.
“Sen. Pimentel’s office has just informed us that he has denied the committee’s request for Senate custody of Mr. Edgar Matobato”, Trillanes office said in a text message sent to media.
In 2012, the Philippine Commission on Human Rights recommended to government prosecutors to file murder charges against Duterte.
He has accused Ms de Lima of involvement in illegal drugs, alleging that she used to have a driver who took money from detained drug lords.
He has also angrily rejected criticism from overseas, recently backtracking after describing the USA president as the “son of a whore”.
When it comes to volatile Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, the USA should follow the lead of the fake Kim Jong Il and take a hands-off approach to his provocations and increasingly pitched rhetoric.
For one, Matobato said Davao City Vice Mayor and presidential son Paolo Duterte ordered the killing of Richard King in 2014 “because of a girl”.
Matobato’s testimony set off a tense exchange between senators allied with Duterte and those critical of him.
“I will not dignify with an answer the accusations of a madman”, he added.
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Another senator, former national police chief Panfilo Lacson, warned Mr Matobato that his admissions that he was involved in killings could land him in jail.
