The hit man told a Senate inquiry Thursday that he and a group of policemen killed some 1,000 people in Davao city on Duterte’s orders from 1988-2013, with the politician himself shooting dead one of the victims. Hours later, Mr. Duterte was at Camp Tecson in Bulacan province, addressing government troops once more in remarks that touched on drugs, history, among other topics, but not on the Senate hearing that day.
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“Even setting aside whatever legal technicality he used, it was heartless and reeks of political maneuvering to cover for President Duterte”, he claimed.
His allegations were labelled “lies and fabrications” at the hearing while presidential spokesman Martin Andanar said investigations into the president’s time as mayor had gone nowhere. The existence of Davao death squads has never been proven.
The Davao Death Squad was first identified by Human Rights Watch in 2009.
Before being elected Philippines president in May, Duterte served as the mayor of the previously crime-ridden Davao City.
Since coming into power in June on a populist anti-crime platform, Duterte has alarmed human rights groups and the global community in his merciless “war on drugs” targeting both the illegal drug trade and users.
“Our job is to kill criminals like drug pusher, rapist, snatcher”.
“They were killed like chickens”, Matobato said.
He described in gruesome detail their killing methods. By 2013, Matobato said he had grown exhausted of killing. Its members consisted of former rebels and police.
Recounting a series of gory incidents to the Senate, Mr Matobato claimed Mr Duterte personally “issued the order to massacre Muslims in the mosques” in 1993 in revenge for the bombing of Davao’s Catholic cathedral.
Matobato and his gang eventually staked out there suspects, arrested them, killed them and buried the bodies in a quarry, he said.
Pimentel, Mr. Duterte’s key ally at the Senate, said he would “try to” have a casual meeting with De Lima, chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights, on Monday. But the killing was not carried out.
Senate leaders clashed yesterday whether Edgar Matobato, star witness of a Senate committee investigating alleged extrajudicial killings under the current administration, should be placed under protective custody.
Another Duterte spokesman, Ernesto Abella, said at a news conference that while Matobato “may sound credible, it is imperative that each and every one of us properly weigh whatever he said and respond right”.
Matobato, 57, also alleged Duterte ordered assassinations, which involved chopping up bodies and feeding a man to a crocodile.
In his testimony, Matobato said he was the triggerman of at least 50 of the murders in Davao. They are mere hearsay.
“The officers told us ordinary killings won’t do”.
In 2012 the Philippines’ Commission on Human Rights confirmed earlier reports of targeted and systematic killings in Davao, on the southern tip of Mindanao island.
But Mr Matobato explained, when Mr Duterte won the presidency he had left the program and went into hiding, fearing for his life.
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Duterte has come under increasing global criticism for his war on drugs, which as of late August had claimed more than 1,900 lives. The alleged violations that resulted from the alarming increase of extra-judicial killing of suspects in the war on drugs ordered by Duterte when he took his oath as the country’s 16th president on June 30. ITV News Hundreds of thousands of drug users have turned themselves in since Duterte came to power.
