Others were disemboweled and dumped at sea to be eaten by fish.
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The fate of the former death squad member, Edgar Matobato, was uncertain on Friday as the Senate president, Duterte ally Aquilino Pimentel, refused to take him into protective custody.
In 1993, he said his group had injured a justice department agent after a confrontation at a road block.
Rodrigo Duterte, the Davao mayor at the time, then arrived on the scene, Matobato said.
Duterte unloaded two magazines of an Uzi submachine gun on Amisola, according to Matobato.
It is not the first time Duterte has had to explain his forceful invective.
The witness, 57-year-old Edgar Matobato, said he was hired by Mr Duterte as one of the “Lambado Boys” in 1988, which eventually evolved into the famous DDS. That’s what we did. “These are the kind we killed every day”, Matobato said.
Matobato said before the commission, which is investigating the president’s anti-drug campaign that began two months ago, Duterte and Nograles were rivals and Duterte got the squad to kidnap Nograles’ people.
Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, who ran unsuccessfully for vice president in May’s elections, accused Matobato of being part of a plot to unseat Duterte.
It also found there was a “systematic failure on the part of local officials to conduct any meaningful investigation into said killings”, and recommended that a local ombudsman investigate whether Duterte was criminally liable for “his inaction in the face of evidence of numerous killings committed in Davao city and his toleration of the commission of these offenses”.
Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella also encouraged the public to stay calm and objective, saying it was prudent to wait for the proper investigation into the matter.
Committee Chair Leila De Lima during the Senate probe on the alleged extrajudicial killings at the Senate in Pasay City.
“I am convinced that the accused who are facing the charge in court are the perpetrators”, he said.
Again, these allegations about death squads in Davao City come during a fierce debate over Rodrigo Duterte’s violent crackdown on drug dealers and users.
Numerous victims were abducted by members of the group who introduced themselves as police officers, then taken to a local quarry where they were killed and buried, he added.
‘The officers told us ordinary killings won’t do.
She said the witness has provided the chamber vital information that shed light on the “whole complexity” of the President’s war on drugs, especially on the similarity of the strategy adopted by the DDS and that of the vigilantes that she said “now roam the whole country”.
In his testimony, Matobato said he was the triggerman of at least 50 of the murders in Davao.
He gave gruesome details of gangland-style hits, including feeding one victim to a crocodile.
One of the victims was a foreign man suspected of being an “international terrorist”, another was the boyfriend of Duterte’s sister. “They are mere hearsay”, Duterte said.
Vice President Leni Robredo declared on Thursday, September 15, “We are 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”.
Among the many murders he claimed were ordered by Mr. Duterte, who went by the code name “Charlie Mike”, was the ambush of broadcaster Jun Pala, a former bosom friend turned fierce critic of the then Davao mayor. The UN and rights watchdogs roundly denounced his comments.
De Lima said the rights body later dug up several skeletons of unidentified people at the Davao quarry.
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“People in Davao City were like chickens – they were being killed without any reason”, Matobato said.
