Witness says Philippine president ordered killings of 1,000
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former Filipino militiaman Edgar Matobato answered questions as he testified before the Philippine Senate in Pasay, south of Manila on Thursday.
MANILA » A former Filipino militiaman testified before the country’s Senate on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte, when he was still a city mayor, ordered him and other members of a liquidation squad to kill criminals and opponents in gangland-style assaults that left about 1,000 dead.
Edgar Matobato, 57, told the nationally televised Senate committee hearing that he heard Duterte order some of the killings, and acknowledged that he himself carried out about 50 deadly assaults as an assassin, including a suspected kidnapper fed to a crocodile in 2007 in southern Davao del Sur province.
Rights groups have long accused Duterte of involvement in death squads, claims he has denied, even while engaging in tough talk in which he stated his approach to criminals was to “kill them all.” Matobato is the first person to admit any role in such killings, and to directly implicate Duterte under oath in a public hearing.
The Senate committee inquiry was led by Sen. Leila de Lima, a staunch critic of Duterte’s anti-drug campaign that has left more than 3,000 suspected drug users and dealers dead since he assumed the presidency in June. 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. She has denied the allegations.
Matobato said Duterte had once even issued an order to kill de Lima, when she chaired the Commission on Human Rights and was investigating the mayor’s possible role in extrajudicial killings in 2009 in Davao. He said he and others were waiting to ambush de Lima but she did not go to a part of a hilly area — a suspected mass grave — where they were waiting to open fire.
“If you went inside the upper portion, we were already in ambush position,” Matobato told de Lima. “It’s good that you left.”
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The recent killings of suspected drug dealers have sparked concerns in the Philippines and among U.N. and U.S. officials, including President Barack Obama, who have urged Duterte’s government to take steps to rapidly stop the killings and ensure his anti-drug war complies with human rights laws and the rule of law.
Duterte has rejected the criticisms, questioning the right of the U.N., the U.S. and Obama to raise human rights issues, when U.S. forces, for example, had massacred Muslims in the country’s south in the early 1900s as part of a pacification campaign.
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. He said that prompted his colleagues to implicate him criminally in one killing to silence him.
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers. These are the kind we killed every day,” Matobato said. But he said their targets were not only criminals but also opponents of Duterte and one of his sons, Paolo Duterte, who is now the vice mayor of Davao.
Presidential spokesman Martin Andanar rejected the allegations, saying government investigations into Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao had already gone nowhere because of a lack of evidence and witnesses.
Philippine human rights officials and advocates have previously said potential witnesses refused to testify against Duterte when he was still mayor out of fear of being killed.
There was no immediate reaction from Duterte. 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 said the victims in Davao allegedly ranged from petty criminals to a wealthy businessman from central Cebu province who was killed in 2014 in his office in Davao city, allegedly because of a feud with Paolo Duterte over a woman. The president’s son said the allegations were without proof and “are mere hearsay,” telling reporters he would “not dignify the accusations of a mad man.”
Other victims were a suspected foreign militant whom Matobato said he strangled, then chopped into pieces and buried in a quarry in 2002. Another was a radio commentator, Jun Pala, who was critical of Duterte and was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen while walking home in 2003.
After a 1993 bombing of a Roman Catholic cathedral in Davao city, Matobato said Duterte ordered him and his colleagues to launch attacks on mosques in an apparent retaliation. He testified he hurled a grenade at one mosque but there were no casualties because the attacks were carried out when no one was praying.
Matobato said some of the squad’s victims were shot and dumped on Davao streets or buried in three secret pits, while others were disposed of at sea with their stomachs cut open and their bodies tied to concrete blocks.
“They were killed like chickens,” said Matobato, who added he that backed away from the killings after feeling guilty and entered a government witness-protection program.
He left the protection program when Duterte became president, fearing he would be killed, and said he decided to surface now “so the killings will stop.”
Matobato’s testimony set off a tense exchange between pro-Duterte and opposition senators.
Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano accused Matobato of being part of a plot to unseat Duterte. “I’m testing to see if you were brought here to bring down this government,” he said.
De Lima eventually declared Cayetano “out of order” and ordered Senate security personnel to restrain him.
Another senator, former national police chief Panfilo Lacson, warned Matobato that his admissions that he was involved in killings could land him in jail.
“You can be jailed with your revelations,” Lacson said. “You have no immunity.”
Duterte has immunity from lawsuits as a president, but de Lima said that principle may have to be revisited now. “What if a leader is elected and turns out to be a mass murderer?” de Lima asked in a news conference after the tense Senate hearing.
30 responses to “Witness says Philippine president ordered killings of 1,000”
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Explosive stuff.
Duterte is the Trump of the Philippines. These guys are amusing and savvy media players until they start killing innocent people.
Are you saying that Trump has killed innocent people?
You are getting to be like boots. Obsess much?
Who’s innocent?
I don’t think Mr. Trump would ever order killings. I personally do not like Mr. Trump, but comparing him to Duterte is really out of line.
Since Duterte had no independent body verifying that the people he killed were “criminals” that deserved the death sentence, it is all too easy to have some of his opponents labeled as “criminals” to justify their assassination. How long will his last, how long will the military stand by him, and how long will the people close their eyes to such atrocities?
All career criminals deserve death, but at least a couple of their crimes have to be verified by a court.
Drug test them first, it they turn up positive, shoot them at gun point or by a firing squad…..drug users and pushers are some of the lowest of the low.
Holey Moley! He is a scary man.
Reminds me of the gangland-style killings occurring on the streets of an Illinois “City”. Also they share a common thread, the killings still continue?
I have a Filipina friend who states that the Filipinos feel safer since Duterte began his anti-crime campaign
The USA also would be a better safer country if they replace their revolving door system by executing all repeat offenders. Although the BLM crowd would then again scream racism. But that crowd would be much diminished in numbers.
A slippery slope?
Yes, slippery, as in one commenter on this story who seems to think the death penalty should be applied to all career criminals, no, wait, make that all “repeat offenders.” No, wait, maybe also the “BLM crowd” (whoever they are) for “screaming racism.” Off with their heads. It’s so much easier than thinking.
Wonder how Duterte would handle the marijuana dispensary hui licensees in Honolulu if he was running Hawaii?
Was the Star Chamber movies based on fact? Magnum Force? Is anybody sick and tired of being victimized by criminals? Courts are supposed to protect the innocent NOT the guilty.
Well not if you happen to be standing next to a suspected drug dealer. You’ll get pulled in too and that’s the end of you no trial.
Its only safer until one of the state sanctions vigilantes comes looking for you or someone else you care about.
lets see, the president of the Philippines called Obama a son of a prostitute, and also what I would like to see is when he said he would like to wrestle Obama in the mud. Obama is not popular with foreign countries. look when he went to China, he did not get a red carpet treatment that china does to other leaders that visit them, Obama had to walk out in the back of air force 1 and the Chinese did not even look at him. Obama is an embarrassment to this country. Hillary twice as worse.
Been drinking too much Kool Aid. Take it easy.
no need to take it easy just printing the facts and showing the other side of the news that was on the radio, AP and SA won’t report that, so kool aid has nothing to do with it.
So what’s going to happen? Nothing, except those testifying against him will be missing soon.
Time to release our USA druggies who are in jail for life with no opportunity for parole and send them one way to the Philippines on Philippines Airline?….give them a second chance?…a win win win?
“government investigations into Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao had already gone nowhere because of a lack of evidence and witnesses.”
Chee! How you figgah! I wonder what wen happen to da witnesses?
Obviously the people most worried are criminals and enemies. I bet he is quite popular.
I suspect Mr. Matobato will be next up to be fed to crocodiles in southern Davao del Sur province by President Duterte’s assassination army.
By his own admission, he might well deserve it.
It is said that a tyrant first appears as a protector/savior before who is really is becomes apparent. The true test of anyone is when they gain power. It is then that the true person
becomes apparent to all.
Duterte’s reign will be short lived. I expect he will fall at the hands of an assassin. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.
The extra-judicial killings remind me of the Marcos’ regime. Back then, they were called “salvagings” of suspected Communist or Muslim rebels. The rule of law needs to return. Otherwise, Duterte might become another Marcos and plunge the country into another civil war. The problem is that although the Philippine military and constabulary changed in Manila when Corazon Aquino became president, the constabulary forces in Davao did not. .They never faced charges for the extra-judicial killings, and they and their successors remain in power.