Matobato complaint bound for dustbin, 2 senators say

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON

Several senators who doubt the credibility of confessed assassin Edgar Matobato believe the torture, murder and other criminal charges he had filed against President Rodrigo Duterte with the Ombudsman are headed for the dustbin.

“If Matobato is presenting the same testimony he did in the Senate hearings, I would say it won’t pass the Ombudsman’s fact-finding stage,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson said in a text message on Saturday. “In fact, he might be opening himself to a perjury case.”

Lacson, head of the Senate committee on public order and illegal drugs, co-chaired the hearings on extrajudicial killings connected to Mr. Duterte’s war on drugs in August where Matobato first aired his allegations against the President.

Matobato then said the President had ordered several Davao Death Squad (DDS) killings and terror attacks in the early ’90s when Mr. Duterte was mayor of Davao City. According to him, the death squad operations included the bombing of mosques and assassination of criminals and perceived enemies.

Lacson had considered Matobato’s Senate testimonies to be confusing and questionable.

The hit man was presented in the hearings by Sen. Leila De Lima, an archcritic of the President, before she was ousted as chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights involved in the joint Senate inquiry.

Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said it was “doubtful” that the cases brought against the President by Matobato will prosper. The President may not be sued in the first place and Matobato was “most probably coerced” to file the charges, he said.

“Obviously, that action is to try and derail the administration’s focus. It won’t fly,” he told the Inquirer through text.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian believed as much, saying: “That will be dismissed eventually.”

“He doesn’t have any solid evidence except his imagination,” Gatchalian said.

Matobato filed charges of murder, kidnapping, torture and crimes against humanity against Mr. Duterte and 27 others on Friday.

Also charged were the President’s son, Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte, Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa and several other Davao City police officers that Matobato said were involved in assassinations by the DDS.

Sen. Richard Gordon, who replaced De Lima midway through the hearings, released the committee’s report earlier this week, which said there was no proof of extrajudicial killings in Mr. Duterte’s antidrug war.

Gordon also recommended Matobato’s prosecution for murder and perjury because of his Senate testimonies.