Philippine senators deride witness behind Duterte ‘death squad’ link

CALL FOR JUSTICE: Activists hold a candle light vigil for victims of the extra judicial killings in the drug war of the government in Manila on Friday. (AFP)

MANILA: Philippine senators cast doubt on the credibility of a self-confessed hit-man on Friday after he testified to seeing the country’s president kill a man and order assassinations during his two decades as mayor of the once restive Davao City.
Edgar Matobato, 57, volunteered to appear at a televised senate hearing on Thursday and told a panel investigating President Rodrigo Duterte’s current drugs war that in the 1990s, he had seen the then Davao mayor order killings and pepper a man’s body with submachine gun fire.
Duterte has yet to comment on the testimony but his office and his political allies have dismissed it as baseless.
Little is known about Matobato, whose senate appearance was a hot topic on social media and radio stations on Friday. He had said he was a member of a “Davao death squad” which had killed hundreds of suspected criminals “like chickens,” chopped up their bodies, and even fed one man to a crocodile.
Senators Panfilo Lacson, Aquilino Pimentel and Alan Peter Cayetano were among numerous lawmakers who said the witness could not be taken seriously.
“There are many lapses in his testimonies,” Lacson said. “Like in baseball, I was counting his strike-outs.”
Duterte won an election in May promising to wipe out drugs and drug dealers.
Since he took office in June, about 2,500 people have been killed in his “war on drugs.” About 900 died in police operations and the rest authorities say were “deaths under investigation,” a term human rights activists say is a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings.
National police chief, Ronald Dela Rosa called Matobato a “false witness” and said death squads never existed in Davao.
He also said Duterte’s anti-narcotics crusade had cut the supply of drugs by 80-90 percent and police were “removing the fear of crime and violence in the hearts of our countrymen.”
Matobato’s whereabouts on Friday were not known.
The senate leadership turned down a request from Leila de Lima, a senator heading the panel looking into Duterte’s drugs war, for Matobato to be taken into protective custody, saying his testimony was not related to the ongoing drugs crackdown.