CHR to investigate Lascañas’ allegations

SPO3 Arturo Lascañas faces the media and admits the existence of the Davao death squad during a press conference at the senate on Monday, February 20, 2017. Inquirer/Grig C. Montegrande

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on Monday said it would still look into the allegations of retired police officer Arturo Lascañas implicating President Duterte in the extrajudicial killings in Davao City, despite the confessed hit man’s flip-flopping Senate testimonies.

CHR Commissioner Roberto Cadiz said the investigation into Lascañas’ claims was part of his office’s probe into the killings attributed to the so-called Davao Death Squad when Mr. Duterte was Davao City mayor.

“Even if Lascañas’ motive for implicating the former mayor (Duterte) in the Davao Death Squad has been put to question, especially by Senator (Manny) Pacquiao during the March 6, 2017 Senate hearing, the testimony itself is too compelling and detailed to ignore,” Cadiz said on Monday.

The CHR commissioner was referring to Pacquiao’s accusation that Lascañas recanted his earlier denial of the existence of the vigilante group because he failed to get approval for government deals he tried to broker for his friends.

Lascañas had denied this, claiming he confessed to having acted as one of Mr. Duterte’s hit men because he experienced a “spiritual renewal.”

Cadiz said that aside from the testimonies of Lascañas and Edgar Matobato, another confessed Davao Death Squad hit man, the CHR would also take as evidence the human bones gathered from the Laud quarry in Davao City in 2009, when the commission began its investigation.

Cadiz said several witnesses had described the Laud quarry as a dumping ground for victims of the Davao Death Squad.