“It’s a coachman’s tale”, Mr. Panelo said in Filipino, using a local idiom which indicated that allegations of former Davao Death Squad (DDS) member Edgar Matobato are fabrications.
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Matobato’s testimony fleshed out in gruesome detail for the first time long-running allegations Duterte was behind the killings of more than a thousand petty criminals, including minors, in Davao, where he was mayor for most of the past two decades.
Duterte swept to power this spring promising to crackdown on crime, just as he did as the longtime mayor of Davao, where he earned a reputation for strongman tactics and was christened “the death squad mayor” for allegedly overseeing extra-judicial killings.
The witness told the Senate that former Vice Mayor of Davao and Duterte’s son, Paulo Duterte, also ordered killings.
During his election campaign at the start of the year, Duterte both admitted and denied involvement in the death squads.
Duterte’s spokesman, Martin Andanar, has however denied these allegations saying, “I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders”.
He later retracted that statement in a press conference, telling reporters there were “no Davao death squads”, but the allegations remain and numerous local and global human rights groups have repeatedly criticized his record.
Leila de Lima has withdrawn her request to Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III to grant a confessed hitman protective custody and has made a decision to raise the issue with her committee instead.
Matobato said he received orders to kill either directly from Duterte or from active-duty Davao police officers assigned to the mayor’s office who were also part of the death squad.
“Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off”.
Victims would be shot or strangled he said, with some disembowelled and dumped into the sea so fish could eat them.
Duterte said at a news conference in the southern city of Davao that he was overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and may need to extend his self-imposed deadline by another six months to end the scourge.
He entered a government witness protection programme after quitting the group but left it after Mr Duterte became President.
That brings the total to 3,541 people killed during Duterte’s 78 days as president.
The Senate committee was headed by Senator Leila de Lima who is a staunch critic of Duterte’s bloody anti-drug campaign.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has dismissed the claims by Matobato, a self-confessed hitman.
Ms De Lima eventually declared Mr Cayetano “out of order” and ordered senate security personnel to restrain him.
“Even if I wanted to, I can not kill them all because the last report would be this thick”, Duterte said, laughing.
It said “there is no evidence to support the killings attributed to or attributable to the DDS”.
“Duterte’s boastful brand of violent impunity should be a path to prosecution, not a platform for political office”, he added. He however said that it is possible that the witness knows the truth behind these revelations but exaggerated them to sound more dramatic. “How did I reach that title among the world’s safest cities?”
“Our job was to kill criminals, rapists, pushers, and snatchers”.
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A self-proclaimed former member of a militia has accused President Rodrigo Duterte of ordering the killing of suspected criminals, the bombing of a mosque and the country’s human rights chair.
