It was the kind of news that dropped a bombshell. Edgar Matobato, the first former assassin of the dreaded Davao Death Squad of Rodrigo Duterte to testify in the Senate, had fled the Philippines to appear before the International Criminal Court.
Many were caught unaware: for those who had long thought he was already outside the country like his DDS team leader Arturo Lascañas before him, and for those who had forgotten his name because he had since been out of sight in a safehouse somewhere in Luzon for the past seven years.
The New York Times article about his escape, complete with photos of him and his wife, even showed scenes of his safehouse, the ride they took to the Manila airport, his flight to an undisclosed foreign country and finally walking the streets of a land whose language was alien to him.
But more importantly, the news of his escape confronted us of the kind that sends shivers down the spine: the Davao Death Squad was real; Duterte’s orgiastic extrajudicial killings (EJKs) had indeed taken place. And then the incredible reality confounds: Edgar Matobato is free at last!
For the many who had long crusaded against the Duterte EJKs, it was an emotional catharsis.
In early 2022, a priest friend, who was in exile in Europe because of death threats he had been receiving, asked for my help. He had behind him 20 solid years of publicly denouncing the killings right from the belly of the beast — Davao City. In 2022, he was in the process of firming up a detailed report of the DDS spanning 1998 to 2015, for submission as information to the ICC.
The help he asked was by no means considerable. But he thought it was of import to the case against Duterte et al of crimes against humanity in the ICC. It was an interview he had with Matobato way back on June 22, 2016. Notice the date — it was before June 30, 2016 when Duterte formally assumed office as president. There was no talk yet of Matobato appearing before the Senate, hardly any national consciousness at all of the grisly mass murders in Davao city.
Matobato had only finished Grade 1. The interview language was Cebuano Binisaya, his lingua franca. A translation was needed for the perusal of the ICC prosecutor (at that time, Fatou Bensouda of Gambia). That was my humble role in the ICC case, to translate Matobato’s account for the understanding of an international tribunal.
It was a role I was more than happy to do. Like my priest friend, I was in exile myself from my own death threats in the Philippines, albeit his was more menacing. Although we lived in different Mediterranean countries, we would often share notes to find solace in the loneliness of exile.
The Matobato interview was more than an eye-opener. Like all narratives on the Davao Death Squad, it was ghastly and macabre.
Matobato began his story in 1988 when Duterte himself organized seven men in a meeting at the Grand Men Seng Hotel. The name was Lambada Boys. His role was as hit man. In fact, that name smacks of stylishness. The work was to be an assassin. It was, in his words, “to kill and only to kill.” They were paid as ghost employees of the Davao city hall.
Duterte was vitriolically intolerant of political opposition to his rule in Davao City. When the former speaker Prospero Nograles challenged him for mayor, something had to be done. Matobato narrates:
In 2009 we killed the people of Prospero Nograles when he ran for mayor, the victims were picked up from their hotel, they were from Manila. Then we killed them, we brought them to Davao del Norte, in Samal Island, and we disposed of them in the sea, one woman and four men.
We picked up the bodyguards. First we took them inside a van, a Hi-Ace, then we tied them, then we slashed their bodies and tied these to hollow blocks. But one body had floated and this was recorded in Samal Island’s Kaputian District, which was investigated by PO2 Hector Solano. One of the bodies had floated and there was a complaint by the barangay, the barangay captain was Loreño of barangay Panggubatan where one body of Nograles’ bodyguards, which we had tied with weights then loaded on a pump boat to be disposed in the sea, was retrieved. Then the woman who was also killed was a barangay captain of Marilog, or was she an ex-captain? Nevertheless she was a leader of Nograles and her body had floated to Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur and it was where it was found. And there were killings that followed, ordered by the mayor.
Mere suspicion of drug use was also a motive to kill. He narrates the killing of three young women. The New York Times article had a more detailed account.
In 2013, we were involved in killing 3 women and we dumped their bodies in San Rafael Village. They were suspected to be drug pushers or drug lords. But the way I had sized them up, they were just suspects. We killed them and dumped their bodies in San Rafael, a subdivision.
Duterte had also engaged the city’s barangay officials in his kill hierarchy. Here, Matobato (a minor player actually as he was only a civilian force multiplier in the hierarchy) would corroborate what Arturo Lascañas would later attest to in his affidavit to the ICC.
The barangay capitans are also given hit men (“tirador”) who are rebel returnees, the rebel returnees who were not hard-core, they are the ones assigned to the barangay captains to kill small-time offenders (“pipitsugin”) and they are also 15-30 ghost employees at the Davao city hall.
Matobato also recalled the several times that Paolo Duterte gave them orders to kill. What else did he know of Paolo’s activities?
Paolo is one of those that control smuggling in the port for the import of used clothing (“ukay-ukay”), rice, and crude oil. Tankers and ships that ply on the port, that’s their business. They placed the blame on Bangayan but it was Paolo himself who controls the import of rice from other countries.
It was Arthur Lascañas and I was tasked to give the bribe money (“tong”) to the Bureau of Customs. Several times I was tasked to bring the money to Customs, 3 million pesos as bribe money to them. It was there I knew they were in control of smuggling in the port of Sasa.
He keeps company with high-tech friends, all drug lords. Not one among his Chinese friends has been killed.
In his affidavit to the ICC, Lascañas also narrated the payment of bribe money to the Bureau of Customs from Paolo.
He was asked what he knew about Bong Go. Notice the corroboration as well with the Lascañas claim on Go.
Bong Go is the bagman who gives the money to finance when there is a killing operation. If not to the other group of hit men, then to us. But he also has a personal group of hit men, like Titing, he has his own personal hit men.
Bothered by his conscience, Matobato retreated from the Davao Death Squad in September 2013. He was tortured for a week and then escaped to hide in Cebu, Samar, and Leyte.
On August 21, 2014, he surrendered to a regional office of the Commission on Human Rights in Tacloban City. The CHR however declined to protect him. He left with his wife to Manila where he knocked on the door of the Department of Justice on September 1. The then-secretary of justice Leila de Lima admitted him in the Witness Protection Program of the National Bureau of Investigation. It was a twist of irony. In 2009, Matobato was one of the hitmen tasked to assassinate De Lima when her CHR team inspected the premises of the Laud Quarry, the DDS killing field, upon orders of Duterte.
In his Twitter (X) account, former senator Antonio Trillanes provides the proper context as to Matobato’s whereabouts just before Duterte came to power:
One of the last acts of PNoy as president was to ensure the safety of Edgar Matobato (who was under the NBI Witness Protection Program at that time) before the assumption of Duterte as president in 2016. He directed a trusted senior government official to facilitate Matobato’s transfer of custody to a senior member of the Catholic Church. This act of PNoy saved Matobato’s life.
Who was that “senior member of the Catholic Church” who we must also credit now for saving Matobato? Because of his intercession, Matobato was given the haven of a safehouse. Sources now say it was Archbishop Soc Villegas. Apologies to the good Father Soc for the disclosure, but this is a time for our gratitude to him.
On September 15, 2016, when Duterte was already president, Matobato testified in the Senate about the Davao City EJKs with the backing of then-senator Leila de Lima. In that Senate hearing, Duterte loyalist senators Alan Peter Cayetano and Richard Gordon pounced on Matobato as though they were not asking a Grade 1 finisher. The Matobato Senate hearing cast Duterte’s die on De Lima for exposing his EJKs. She was to be silenced for it by way of fabricated charges that locked her up in jail for six years of unjust detention.
On September 27, 2016, Rappler’s Chay Hofileña ran a detailed biographical background on Matobato including his ID card at Davao city hall and his appointment papers signed by authority of Duterte for job order work. Matobato was real. This was no hearsay.
Sometime late 2022, my priest friend informed me that his detailed report on the Davao Death Squad and the Matobato transcript I had translated had been admitted as information in the ICC. My priest friend died in May 2024 of cardiac arrest after he had returned to the Philippines. One of the last things he had written: I am hopeful that justice will be served no matter how long it takes.
The emotion is real: Matobato is free at last — thank God Almighty he is free at last! It points to a generous heaping of hope, that Rodrigo Duterte and all accomplices named with him will face the bar of justice in the International Criminal Court. – Rappler.com