Let us begin with the most recent declaration by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, Robynne Croft. She claimed that 1,500 to 2,000 victims of extrajudicial killings carried out by the Davao Death Squad were buried in an abandoned quarry in Davao City.
This was the fundamental issue against former President Rodrigo Duterte and Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa. This was the basis for the forcible arrest of President Duterte by the Marcos government, which shanghaied him off to The Hague, where he remains under ICC detention.
If we go by the facts of the case and the allegations in the charges, the case should have been dismissed on day one. Both the ICC prosecutors and judges believed one side of the story. Google also swallowed the story hook, line and sinker, and even suggests, “You can read more about the ICC’s investigation into the situation in the Philippines via the Human Rights Watch summary or read Rappler’s in-depth investigative report regarding the specific claims about the Laud Quarry.”
Now that looks like a tight case, buttressed by a compendium of facts. In truth, however, it is a narration of lies woven in half-truths and prevarications.
Here is how the charges collapse by the sheer weight of the falsehoods.
Contrary to the claims of the then Human Rights Commissioner Leila de Lima that thousands were buried in the abandoned quarry in Davao City, she has not produced a single piece of evidence to this day. She personally supervised the probe in 2009 on the alleged victims of extrajudicial killings carried out by the Davao Death Squad.
After her stint as CHR chair, De Lima was appointed Justice Secretary and was later elected senator. She and Antonio Trillanes, a dyed-in-the-wool anti-Duterte character, presented Edgar Matobato and Arturo Lascañas, who both claimed to be members of the DDS, as witnesses in a Senate investigation. Matobato claimed he buried several EJK victims, but could not point to where he buried them.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs in the previous Senate, led the legislative probe into the testimonies of Matobato and Lascañas regarding the alleged Davao Death Squad.
He later tagged Matobato and Lascañas as “unreliable and flip-flopping witnesses with little to no evidentiary value.” They were declared perjured witnesses, prompting them to leave the country to escape imprisonment.
The DDS was a myth propagated in 1984 by the Integrated National Police (now PNP) in its psychological war with the murderous liquidation squad of the New People’s Army. It was conceptualized by Davao Police Regional Commander, Col. Dionisio Tan-gatue Jr.
Now back to Duterte’s trial. The ICC prosecution cited affidavits from whom they said were made by self-confessed former DDS members Matobato and Lascañas, who claimed to have witnessed or participated in the burial of bodies at the abandoned quarry.
It is the height of absurdity to anchor the charges of the prosecutors and whatever verdict the Justices of the ICC would arrive at on fabricated stories of perjured witnesses and anti-Duterte politicians.
How can one believe the fairy tales of pan-handling human rights organizations — which are being spread by Rappler — that there were 30,000 victims of EJK carried out by ghost DDS forces?
What a paradox. It is our misfortune that nowadays ghost DDS squads and unseen EJK victims are as believable as the ghost flood control projects that the government paid for in the trillions of pesos.