The self-described assassin told a Senate hearing that he and a group of policemen and former communist rebels killed about 1,000 people over 25 years on Mr Duterte’s orders – one of them fed alive to a crocodile.
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“It seems like he wants to avenge the bombing of the cathedral”, he said in Filipino referring to Duterte, who allegedly also ordered to grab and kill “Muslim” suspects, and “bury them in a quarry”.
He said others were thrown into the sea, their stomach slashed to prevent bodies floating to the surface, he said.
Edgar Matubato, 57, said he appeared at the Senate inquiry into the extrajudicial killings that have accompanied the Duterte administration’s war on drugs because “I want to give justice for my crimes and to those who we, I, killed”.
Duterte has accused de Lima of involvement in illegal drugs, alleging that she used to have a driver who took money from detained drug lords.
Matobato said that in 1993, he and other members of the death squad were on a mission when they approached a Davao road blocked by the vehicle of an agent from the justice department’s National Bureau of Investigation.
A confrontation degenerated into a shootout.
During the speech, Duterte held aloft photos and accounts of US troops who in 1906 were accused of atrocities against Muslims during a rebellion against American rule. “He emptied two Uzi magazines on him”. That’s what we did. “Those were the people we killed every day”, Matobato said.
Duterte also said he is considering purchasing weapons and military equipment from two nations “where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached and it is transparent”.
Matobato told the hearing he once served as a paramilitary who fought Maoist rebels and chose to tell all that he knew about the Davao death squad after being made a “fall guy” in the killing of a Davao businessman.
“I don’t think he’s capable of giving a directive like that”.
Philippine presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told local media Duterte’s latest comments reflected the government’s new direction towards a more independent foreign policy.
Mr Duterte, who took office more than two months ago, won May elections in a landslide on a promise to kill thousands of criminals.
Matobato said under oath that the killings went on from 1988, when Duterte first became Davao city mayor, to 2013, when Matobato said he expressed his desire to leave the death squad.
She said it is “being waged under the leadership and direction of President Rodrigo Duterte, with a firm adherence to the rule of law, due process, and human rights principles”.
Some of the victims were shot and dumped on Davao streets or buried in three unmarked graves, he said, adding some were disposed of in the sea with their stomachs cut open so they would not float and would be eaten by fish right away.
One of the victims was a foreign man suspected of being an “international terrorist”, another was the boyfriend of Duterte’s sister. Matobato said he was the one who hurled the grenade at Bangkerohan Mosque.
Matobato’s testimony set off a tense exchange between pro-Duterte and opposition senators. “I will not dignify with an answer the accusations of a madman”. Pumapasok ‘yan dati sa Ateneo de Davao.
“If you went inside the upper portion, we were already in ambush position”, Matobato told de Lima.
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Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he’s considering buying weapons from Russian Federation and China while also ending joint patrols with USA forces in the South China Sea.
