‘Hitman’ charge sparks Duterte probe calls
MANILA: The Philippines faced calls yesterday to investigate its firebrand president after a self-confessed hitman alleged Rodrigo Duterte ordered a thousand opponents and suspected criminals murdered when he was a city mayor. Edgar Matobato told a Senate inquiry on 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. “These are serious allegations and we take them seriously, we look into them,” said US State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner.
The allegations surfaced as the Senate investigated alleged extra-judicial killings in an ongoing anti-drug crackdown that has led to more than 3,000 deaths in Duterte’s first 72 days in office. Critics say the alleged killings in Davao, where Duterte was mayor for more than 20 years, established a pattern that has spread nationwide under the new presidency. The testimony of self-confessed hitman Edgar Matobato sheds light on “the similarity of the strategy adopted by the (Davao Death Squad) and that of the vigilantes that now roam the whole country,” Senator Leila de Lima, leading the inquiry, said in a statement.
US-based watchdog Human Rights Watch urged Manila to let United Nations investigators probe the hitman’s claims. “President Duterte can’t be expected to investigate himself, so it is crucial that the United Nations is called in to lead such an effort,” the monitor’s Asia director Brad Adams said. Sitting Philippine presidents are immune from criminal prosecution during their single, six-year term. However, the constitution provides for their impeachment and removal from office for “culpable violation of the constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, other high crimes, or betrayal of public trust”.
In 2001, president and populist exmovie star Joseph Estrada was removed from office in a militarybacked popular revolt, though an impeachment trial against him on graft charges was inconclusive. During his election campaign at the start of the year, Duterte variously admitted and denied involvement in the death squads. He has so far ignored the latest allegations but Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre branded them as “lies and fabrications”.