http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/world/asia/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-hitman.html 2016-09-15 15:52:56 Rodrigo Duterte Ordered Philippine Killings, Professed Hit Man Testifies A spokesman denied the charges against President Duterte, who was accused in a Senate hearing of presiding over 1,000 killings as mayor of Davao City. === MANILA — In explosive testimony on Thursday, a self-described hit man said at a Senate hearing that the Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, had presided over the extrajudicial killings of about 1,000 criminals and political opponents while serving as mayor of a southern city. The witness, Edgar Matobato, 57, said in the televised hearing that he had heard Mr. Duterte, who was “We were tasked to kill criminals every day, including pushers and snatchers,” Mr. Matobato said, adding that the hit squad eventually grew to dozens of killers, from seven. He said that the squad operated with the tacit approval of the Davao police. A spokesman for the president, Martin Andanar, denied the charges on Thursday, saying of Mr. Duterte: “I don’t think he is capable of giving those orders.” The hearing was led by Senator Leila de Lima, a former chairwoman of the Philippine “Perhaps we can link what is happening now to what happened in Davao City in the 1990s until the present, and how the Philippines now mirrors the city of Davao under the two-decade rule of Mayor Duterte,” Ms. de Lima said at the hearing Thursday. The national police said in a statement on Thursday that 1,506 people suspected of being drug dealers or users had been killed by the police in the campaign since Mr. Duterte took office and that 1,571 additional murders over the same period were under investigation. Mr. Duterte’s anti-crime campaign has alarmed human rights groups, which have expressed fears that extrajudicial killings are eroding the rule of law in the Philippines, an important American ally in Asia. International leaders have also expressed concern, including President Obama, who urged Mr. Duterte to observe the rule of law and human rights. Mr. Duterte has responded by going on the offensive. This month, he Mr. Duterte has also accused Ms. de Lima of taking drug cartel money — a charge she denied — and suggested that she hang herself. Joseph Franco, a research fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who has studied the Philippine military establishment, said that allegations about the Davao Death Squad had never been aired so publicly at a high-level Senate hearing. “This will be a test case,” he said in an email. “We shall see if Matobato’s testimony creates the condition to remove the chilling effect” that Mr. Duterte’s “clan” had long exerted on potential witnesses. Mr. Duterte’s promises during his presidential campaign to pursue his antidrug push nationally were in keeping with a long career of provocative remarks about criminal justice, including his assertion in 2009 that crime suspects were “a legitimate target of assassination.” Rights groups have long accused him of being complicit in hundreds of extrajudicial killings in Davao. The Philippine Commission on Human Rights said that from 2005 to 2009, the Davao Death Squad had Death squads have also killed gang members and children in Davao, the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said in But Mr. Duterte has long denied any direct knowledge of government-sanctioned death squads, and the Davao police say they have not found evidence that the squads exist. In his Senate testimony, Mr. Matobato said he was appointed to the death squad, originally known as the Lambada Boys, after Mr. Duterte was first elected mayor of Davao in 1988. Mr. Matobato said that he took part in about 50 assassinations from 1988 to 2013 and that the squad had killed about 1,000 people. One victim was fed to crocodiles, he recalled, and four others were hanged and thrown to sea off the island city of Samal, near Davao. The squad also worked with government security forces to target a mosque, he said, adding that Mr. Duterte ordered the attack to avenge the 1993 bombing of a cathedral. Mr. Matobato testified that he threw a grenade into the mosque but it turned out to be empty, so Mr. Duterte personally ordered the squad to round up Muslim suspects in the cathedral bombing. “We pounced on them and later killed them, and buried them in a quarry,” Mr. Matobato said. He said Mr. Duterte was also personally involved in the killing of Juan Pala, the spokesman for a vigilante group that once defended Davao and neighboring communities from attacks by members of a Communist insurgency. Mr. Pala had accused Mr. Duterte of corruption before he was shot in 2003, Mr. Matobato said, and the killing was made to appear like the work of Communist rebels. In 2013, Mr. Matobato said, he tried to leave the death squad. “I wanted to work decently, and my conscience was bothering me,” he said. “Innocent people were being killed.” His handlers tortured him, he added, but eventually let him go.