Philippine ex-President Duterte says he kept a `death squad’ as mayor to kill criminals

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told a Senate inquiry Monday that he had maintained a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals when he was mayor of a southern Philippine city.

Duterte, however, denied authorizing police to gun down thousands of suspects in a bloody crackdown on illegal drugs he had ordered as president and which is the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity.

Duterte, 79, attended the televised inquiry in his first public appearance since his term ended in 2022. The Senate is looking into the drug killings under Duterte, which were unprecedented in their scale in recent Philippine history.

Duterte acknowledged without elaborating that he once maintained a death squad of seven “gangsters” to deal with criminals when he was the longtime Davao city mayor, before he became president.

“I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not policemen, they were also gangsters.”

“I’ll ask a gangster to kill somebody,” Duterte said. “If you will not kill (that person), I will kill you now.”

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, who was overseeing the inquiry, and Sen. Risa Hontiveros, pressed Duterte to provide more details but the former president responded in unclear terms and said he would explain further in the next hearing.

Often cursing during the hearing, Duterte said he would take full responsibility for the killings that happened while he was president from 2016 to 2022. But he said he never ordered his national police chiefs, who also attended the inquiry, to undertake extrajudicial killings.

“Did I ever tell you to kill any criminal?” Duterte asked his