MATOBATO
There’s no finding that the many deaths in the ongoing government war on illegal drugs have the blessing of the Duterte administration, but still there’s a need to safeguard the rights of those accused.
Specifically, drug suspects needed to be informed of their constitutional rights and that they should be with their lawyers when they sign a document before investigators that they were drug users or pushers—something now being done under the Philippine National Police’s “Operation Tokhang.”
These were among the things mentioned in a Senate justice committee report on an inquiry into alleged extrajudicial killings in President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs, Sen. Richard Gordon, chair of the panel, said on Tuesday.
The report was supposed to be released on Tuesday, but Gordon’s office said it still needed the signatures of majority of the committee members.
“We did not get proof that it’s state-sponsored,” Gordon told reporters, referring to allegations of extrajudicial executions. He added that the hearings were too limited and lacked witnesses.
No proof of DDS
He said the committee also did not get any proof of the existence of the so-called Davao Death Squad (DDS), said to have been formed in Davao City when Mr. Duterte was mayor to execute criminals.
But Gordon said the committee proved that confessed DDS assassin Edgar Matobato was lying.
He said Matobato should be prosecuted for confessing to the panel that he killed a suspected Pakistani terrorist, Sali Makdum, whose body had not been found.
Matobato was brought to the Senate hearing by Sen. Leila de Lima to prove her claims about the existence of the DDS.
Ousted chair
De Lima was ousted as committee chair after senators protested that Matobato was giving them the runaround.
The report slammed De Lima and Sen. Antonio Trillanes, saying they “behaved badly” during the hearings.
Gordon, who replaced De Lima as committee chair, said he did not make any recommendations for De Lima and Trillanes to be charged before the Senate ethics committee.
He said it was up to the Senate to act on his report.
Gordon said he cited De Lima’s walkout from one of the hearings and her act of “material concealment”’ when she did not disclose that Matobato was facing a charge in the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) for kidnapping Makdum.
As for Trillanes, he said the senator was cited for letting Matobato leave the Senate hearings when senators were about to confront him on the NBI case against him.
Rogue policemen
The report blasted the police for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of people made to sign documents that they were drug users or pushers, he said.
“They have to have lawyers with them and there is also a need to provide education on the constitutional rights of people against self-incrimination as well as their rights against rogue policemen,” Gordon said.
Gordon also said he recommended all provincial district police commanders to report every month on the number of extrajudicial killings in their areas.
This would enable Congress to determine whether the police commander should be replaced for failing to solve these killings, he added.
Summary hearings
The committee proposed the swift conduct of summary hearings on policemen involved in extrajudicial killings.
Gordon said the Land Transportation Office should ensure that the plate numbers of motorcycles, jeeps and even tricycles were larger so that vigilantes using them in killing drug suspects could be detected easily.
Asked for comment, De Lima told reporters that she planned to file a dissenting opinion.