Senators to meet Tuesday on how to proceed with probe into killings

SENATE PROBE. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/RICHARD A. REYES

Senators belonging to the justice and public order committees are to meet Tuesday afternoon to determine how to proceed with their joint inquiry into alleged extrajudicial killings in the Duterte administration’s war on drugs.

Tuesday’s caucus to be held before the 3 p.m. Senate session was a result of the previous day’s drama at the joint hearing that saw Sen. Leila de Lima walking out after heated exchanges between the senators and the subsequent call of Senators Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao and Alan Peter Cayetano to terminate the hearings.

READ: De Lima storms out of Senate probe into killings

But Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the justice and human rights committee, decided to put on hold the hearings “until further notice” and called for Tuesday’s caucus among the members.

The joint committees were supposed to hold hearings Tuesday and Wednesday.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, chair of the committee of public order and dangerous drugs, said there were proposals to “suspend indefinitely” hearing the issue where confessed hitman Edgar Matobato alleged that President Rodrigo Duterte as mayor of Davao City was behind a death squad that killed 1,000 criminals.

“..(In) case the two senators can find corroborating evidence, we can still re-open,” Lacson told the Inquirer, referring to De Lima and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV who have

Lacson said he will suggest at the caucus for the two committees to continue hearing the original subject of the hearings which was on the alleged extrajudicial killings in the ongoing deadly war on drugs.

Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said he was for the termination of hearing Matobato’s testimony after Monday’s dramatic hearing.

For her part, De Lima said that she will join the caucus if invited so she can air her views.

She complained she was ganged up by her colleagues and that she was forced to walk out because none of them were even listening to her.

“I have no more choice. It’s too much already,” De Lima told reporters before the caucus.

De Lima said she will push in the caucus for the committees to continue hearing Matobato’s testimony.

Towards the end of Monday’s 13-hour-long hearing, senators blew their top after learning Matobato had left the Senate early in the day when they wanted to find out why he did not tell them he was charged by the National Bureau of Investigation for kidnapping with ransom of a Pakistani national whom he had earlier alleged was killed by the Davao Death Squad for being a terrorist.

READ: Gordon, De Lima feud over Matobato kidnap case; drug slay hearing stopped

Senators at the hearing had said they felt they were fooled by Matobato, especially when the latter was no longer around to confront 16 of 22 Davao policemen he had alleged to be DDS members like him.

Not even the explanation of Trillanes, who returned to the Senate to say he allowed Matobato to leave for security purposes, pacified the senators who were then blaming De Lima for not telling them about Matobato’s kidnap with ransom charge or what Gordon said was a “material concealment” of information.

De Lima walked out of the hearing after confronting Gordon as well as Lacson, Cayetano and Pacquiao. RAM