Duterte’s son, Paolo, now the vice mayor of Davao City, was also implicated Thursday; Matobato said the younger Duterte ordered the 2014 slaying of billionaire Richard King, in a fight over a woman.
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Following alleged instructions of President Rodrigo Duterte, Matobato, who was first a Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) member under the Scout Rangers in Davao City, later graduated to becoming part of a group that killed criminals in Davao City.
Since his election more than 3,000 drug users and dealers have been killed in police operations or by vigilantes, according to the authorities, amid global alarm over human rights violations.
Trillanes made the revelation after expressing disappointment over the decision of Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel to deny the request of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights for the custody of alleged ex-Davao Death Squad (DDS) hitman, Edgar Matobato.
The then head of the Commission on Human Rights, Senator Leila de Lima, told the inquiry Mr Matobato had surrendered to the investigatory body in 2009 and had until recently been in a witness protection scheme.
The recent killings of suspected drug dealers have sparked concerns in the Philippines and among United Nations and U.S. officials, including president Barack Obama, who have urged Mr Duterte’s government to stop the killings and ensure his anti-drug war respected human rights and complied with the law.
A spokesman for Duterte, Martin Andanar, denied the allegations.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers”.
“Mayor Duterte was the one who finished him off”, Mr Matoboto said under oath, according to a translation from AFP. In that case, “at least we need Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries surrounding the South China Sea in our group”, he said in an interview this week in Tokyo.
He was a member of a hit squad that killed hundreds over the years, taking part in about 50 of the murders himself.
One of the victims – a suspected kidnapper – was apparently fed alive to a crocodile in 2007 in southern Davao del Sur province.
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.
Andanar said investigations into the President’s time as mayor had gone nowhere.
Paolo Duterte issued a statement pouring water on Matobato’s testimony, which he said was “all based on hearsays”. “I’ll supply the dead bodies”, he said.
It was a quick reaction to the senator’s claim that the testimony of witness Edgar Matobato could be used to impeach the President and leave Robredo and the Liberal Party as the main beneficiaries.
He said that there was no truth to the words of Matobato that there was a planned ambush against the team of De Lima.
Mr Matobato said he withdrew from the squad after feeling guilty and entered a government-run witness protection programme. “I was tortured for a week”, Matobato said, offering this betrayal as the reason for coming forward now.
Human-rights groups have also called Duterte the “Death Squad Mayor”, a moniker he seemingly embraced in May during the election, saying in televised remarks, “Am I the death squad?”
Joseph Franco, a research fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who has studied the Philippine military establishment, said that allegations about the Davao Death Squad had never been aired so publicly at a high-level Senate hearing.
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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.
