Who Is Edgar Matobato?
Edgar Matobato was the current witness who said volunteered to reveal things in the Senate probe on alleged extra-judicial kil1ings beings thrown to the Duterte administration’ war on drugs.
Now, many have been asking who Edgar Matobato is.
Edgar Matobato was a 57-year-old man that according to a report on Inquirer, was a former member of the Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) in Davao province, who has served the armed forces from 1982 until 1988.
He also testified that he has been recruited by former Davao City Mayor and now President, Rodrigo Duterte into the so-called “Lambada Boys”. It is a ‘liquidation’ squad allegedly organized by the mayor.
According to Matobato, the said squad was originally composed of seven people, and has soon grown in number and became the “Davao De@th Squad” in the early 1990s.
He also said that during his alleged membership in the group, he stated that he has already taken the lives of about 50 people.
Matobato added that he worked as Duterte’s security aide in his house and was also a ghost employee at the Davao City Hall at the Civil Security Unit.
The said witness narrated that he withdrew from the said group in September 2013, but, according to him, he was tortured for a week, and escaped. He claims that he hid in the provinces of Samar, Leyte, and Cebu.
In the report, it said that Matobato surrendered to a regional office of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on August 2014, but, left for Manila to apply for the witness protection program (WPP) offered by the Department of Justice in September 2014.
This is because the CHR cannot provide told him that it could not protect him.
Before volunteering to become a witness in the Senate hearing against the alleged EJK on Thursday, Matobato said that he left the WPP and hid in provinces in Luzon after Duterte became president.