Justice will catch up with Rody — lawmaker

President Duterte will eventually have to answer for the thousands of killings related to his anti-drug war and during his stint as mayor of Davao City, opposition Rep. Edcel Lagman said yesterday.

“Criminal justice, whether international or domestic, will eventually catch up with Duterte, notwithstanding his cavalry of apologists,” he said.

“Neither obstinate denial nor bare braggadocio can enable the Duterte administration to blunt the preliminary examination to be conducted by the International Criminal Court (ICC),” he said.

He said the killings related to the administration’s antidrug campaign and those attributed to the Davao death squad during Duterte’s time as mayor “amount to crimes against humanity.”

Lagman made the statement in reaction to the ICC decision to conduct a “preliminary examination” of the administration’s bloody anti-drug war.

“No less than the President himself on numerous instances has admitted he commissions and/or prodded and condoned the extrajudicial killings (EJK),” he said.

He cited the following “incriminating admissions and utterances” of the President:

- “I will not stop until the last pusher on the streets is fully exterminated.”

- “I will kill all the drug lords. Make no bones about it.”

- “We say it’s not the work of police to be wrapping people with plastic and (putting) them in the bag. That is not a job of the police. I just told (them) that one bullet will do.”

- “In Davao I used to do it personally. Just to show to the guys (police officers) that if I can do it, why can’t you?”

- “And I’d go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also … I was really looking for a confrontation so I could kill.”

- “… human rights is always the anti-thesis of government.” He compared himself to Hitler and would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts.

- “Crime against humanity? In the first place, I’d like to be frank with you: are they humans? What is your definition of a human being?”