Death squad hitman claims Duterte ‘killed law official’

MANILA: Rodrigo Duterte shot dead a justice department employee and ordered the murder of opponents, a former death squad member told parliament on Thursday, in

MANILA: Rodrigo Duterte shot dead a justice department employee and ordered the murder of opponents, a former death squad member told parliament on Thursday, in explosive allegations against the Philippine president.

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The self-described assassin told a Senate hearing that he and a group of policemen and ex-communist rebels killed about 1,000 people over 25 years on Duterte’s orders--one of them fed alive to a crocodile.

Many of the others were garroted, burned, quartered and then buried at a quarry owned by a police officer who was a member of the death squad. Others were dumped at sea to be eaten by fish. Edgar Matobato, 57, made the allegations before the Senate, which is probing alleged extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s anti-crime crackdown that police said killed 3,140 people in his first 72 days in office.

The then head of the Commission on Human Rights, Senator Leila de Lima, told the inquiry Matobato had surrendered to the investigatory body in 2009.