DDS hit men Matobato, Lasca帽as as ICC witnesses vs Duterte: Who are they?
COMPOSITE IMAGE of Lascañas, Duterte and Matobato
MANILA, Philippines—Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascañas were once hit men of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), and now that Rodrigo Duterte is already at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged murder as a crime against humanity, a lawyer said their testimony would really be “significant.”
Kristina Conti, ICC assistant to counsel, told 黑料社, that “they could be [witnesses] because they are insiders who can talk about the planning, implementation, and even the participants in the whole DDS operations.”
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“Yes,” she said when asked if the testimonies of Matobato and Lascañas would carry significant weight against Duterte, who was arrested on the basis of a warrant from the ICC on March 11.
READ: EXPLAINER: Brutal attacks on civilians hauled Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague
Edgardo Matobato
Matobato, a confessed hit man, said in a Senate committee investigation in 2016 that it was Duterte who created the DDS, a group of police and non-police hit men tasked with killing criminals and crime suspects, when Duterte was still mayor of Davao City.
Back in 1982 to 1988, Matobato was a member of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit in Davao, but Duterte recruited him into the “Lambada Boys,” which later became DDS. A document from the ICC stated that “Duterte personally instructed DDS groups that their mission was to kill criminals.”
As a hit man, Matobato said he had killed at least 50 people until he withdrew in 2013. However, he was tortured for a week until he escaped and hid in the provinces of Cebu, Samar, and Leyte. He surrendered to a regional office of the Commission on Human Rights in 2014, but he was told it could not protect him.
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Because of this, he and his wife went to Manila to seek witness protection from the Department of Justice, but as Duterte won as president in 2016, he said he went into hiding in some provinces in Luzon until he volunteered to be at the Senate investigation in 2016.
A year later, however, a warrant of arrest was issued against him for a non-bailable charge of kidnapping over an incident in 2002. Since then, he again went into hiding until he left the Philippines with his wife and two stepchildren in the second quarter of 2024.
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Former Sen. Leila De Lima, in a previous radio interview, said Matobato left because the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor had to access him for its investigation of Duterte’s war on drugs, stating that he is under protective custody now of the ICC in an undisclosed location.
It was Matobato’s lawyer, Jude Sabio, who filed one of the first complaints against Duterte at the ICC. However, it was later withdrawn for political reasons.
Arturo Lascañas
A police officer when Duterte became mayor, Lascañas was assigned to the Anti-Crime Unit of the Davao City Police Office, which is said to be the birthplace of the DDS. He was l
part of the core group and his main job was to plan the operations.
He stated in an interview in 2017 that he received an allowance of P100,000 every month, but signed a receipt for only half of the amount. He used the rest at his own disposal, giving some of it to almost 12 other people who helped him in his work.
Lascañas said he killed 200 people in his 20 years as a hit man.
READ: EJK victims’ mom: Duterte arrest not enough as Dela Rosa, Albayalde still free
But in 2015, he suffered from kidney disease that required dialysis. This marked his breakaway with the DDS, and as he said, he prayed and promised God that “if you extend my life, I will tell the whole truth, I would not take it with me to the grave.”
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It was in 2016 when he started writing, in longhand, a no-holds-barred confession regarding the DDS, but in a Senate investigation in the same year, he dismissed as “lies” the allegations made by Matobato, who linked him to the EJKs allegedly committed by the DDS.
It took a few months for him to say that it was him who lied, explaining in a 12-page affidavit that it was because of fear. “I was forced to deny what Matobato said even if most of it was true, because I was afraid for the safety and security of my loved ones in Davao City,” he said.
READ: Duterte’s ICC arrest: Separating fact from lies
Last year, he said he had already given his testimony before investigators from the ICC when it conducted its pre-trial investigation in 2022. Lascañas, who tagged Duterte as the one behind the DDS, did not disclose where the interview was conducted.
