Matobato posts bail on frustrated murder case in Manila court

Edgar Matobato surrenders at the MPD on Thursday, March 9, 2017. INQUIRER PHOTO/GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE

Confessed hit man Edgar Matobato posted P200,000 bail at the Manila Regional Trial Court on Thursday on an alleged frustrated murder case and was promptly released.

Matobato was ordered arrested after a lawyer, Abero Salcedo, filed the case against him.

Salcedo had recognized Matobato when he appeared in a nationally televised hearing alleging that President Rodrigo Duterte, when he was mayor of Davao City, organized the Davao Death Squad (DDS) and ordered the killings of criminals and political enemies.

He said Matobato was the same man who attempted to kill him in an ambush in Digos City in Davao del Sur province on Oct. 23, 2014.

“These are trumped-up charges. They are accusing me, saying the assailant looked like me. That’s impossible because the ambush was in October 2014. I was already in hiding in July 2014,” Matobato said in an interview. “I’m ready to face any case they would file against me.”

Testimony of ‘handler’

Matobato said he cried when he watched  SPO3 Arturo Lascañas, his former “handler” in the DDS, on TV when he testified in the Senate and implicated Mr. Duterte in the DDS.

“I couldn’t help but cry. Finally, he admitted that what I’m saying was true. That I’m not lying,” he said.

Matobato said he believed that like him, Lascañas was bothered by his conscience.

“I used to sleep in his house. We used to eat together. We’re like brothers,” he said.

He said he hoped that all the other DDS members would come forward and tell the truth.

DOJ investigation

Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said on Thursday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was investigating claims by Lascañas in the Senate on Monday that he had killed over 200 people on alleged orders of Mr.  Duterte.

Aguirre confirmed Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s statement that the DOJ was seeking the sworn statement and affidavit that Lascañas had submitted to his committee on public order and dangerous drugs recanting a previous testimony  denying the existence of the DDS.

Asked whether the DOJ move meant it was preparing to file charges against Lascañas, Aguirre said: “That’s the direction toward which we are [heading].”

“[Lascañas] admitted killing many people like what Matobato had said. So we would like to know his culpability,” he told reporters.

Duterte’s ‘order’

Lascañas said on Monday that he took part in many killings that were ordered personally by Mr. Duterte or by the mayor’s trusted aide, SPO4 Sonny Buenaventura.

He said among the people he had killed were nine of 11 Chinese drug suspects who were arrested in a drug bust where one of the suspects offered policemen P200 million for their freedom. But Lascañas said Mayor Duterte told them not to accept the money and ordered them killed instead.

Lascañas also admitted killing a Taiwanese  he was ordered to abduct along with two other men who were “in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

He said the  Taiwanese had told him he had problems with a Chinese friend of now Davao Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte.

Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who presented Lascañas at the hearing, said he expected the DOJ move.

“The legal persecution is expected the way they are fast-tracking cases against Edgar Matobato,” Trillanes said in a text message.

“But the DOJ should also use Lascañas’ admissions that President Duterte ordered numerous killings as basis for murder charges against [Mr.] Duterte,” Trillanes said.