Senators in the Philippines have cast doubt over the credibility of a witness who has testified to seeing President Rodrigo Duterte kill a man and order assassinations while mayor of Davao City.
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In his most explosive remarks, Matobato said that he had heard Duterte personally order some of the killings.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”, Matobato said under oath, adding that some of the targets were not criminals but opponents of Duterte and one of his sons in Davao city.
Matobato said Duterte recruited him around 1988 into the “Lambada Boys”, an assassin squad in Davao that killed more than 1,000 people.
During the Senate hearing on the extrajudicial killings in the government antidrug war, on Thursday, September 15, Matobato claimed he was a member of the DDS here and one of the henchmen tasked by the former mayor, now President Duterte, to chop the body of Jocelyn’s boyfriend who he said was a dance instructor.
During his testimony, Matobato said he was a member of a “Davao death squad” which had killed hundreds of Duterte opponents and suspected criminals and had even fed a man to a crocodile.
He added that bodies would often be dumped in the sea so that fish could eat them, reported BBC. “We killed people nearly on a daily basis” between 1988 and 2013, Mr Matobato said.
Mr Duterte, he alleged, ordered him and others to kill about 1,000 criminals or political rivals over a 25-year period.
In 1993, he said his group had injured a justice department agent after a confrontation at a road block.
“The fact alone that he has been with the witness protection program for…two to three years…he already should have disclosed those allegations a long time ago”, the chief legal counsel said as he questioned the timing of Motabato’s emergence as witness.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre described Matobato’s testimony as “lies, fabrications and a product of a fertile and a coached imagination”.
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”.
“He ordered us to kill Muslims”, Matobato said.
Duterte’s office denies the claims.
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. As well as police operations, many have been the victims of extra-judicial killings from unknown assailants.
Mr Duterte has immunity from lawsuits as a president, but Ms de Lima said that principle may have to be revisited now.
Another spokesman for Duterte‚ Ernesto Abella‚ said the allegations needed to be properly scrutinised.
The report noted that there was a “dearth of evidence” to conclude that local police or local government was directly complicit in the extrajudicial killings.
“Just give me a little extension of maybe another six months”, Xinhua news agency quoted the Philippines President as saying.
“These are serious allegations and we take them seriously, we look into them”, said deputy spokesperson Mark Toner.
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The recent killings of suspected drug dealers have sparked concerns in the Philippines and among United Nations and USA officials, including President Barack Obama, who have urged Duterte’s government to take steps to rapidly stop the killings and ensure his anti-drug war complies with human rights laws and the rule of law.
