# Edgar Matobato

Edgar Bernal Matobato (born 1959) is a Filipino self-confessed hitman and whistleblower who claims to be a former member of the Davao Death Squad or the "DDS", an alleged vigilante group tasked to summarily execute suspected criminals. He gained international recognition in 2016 when he testified before the Senate of the Philippines, reporting about his experience as a hitman under the DDS. Following a non-bailable warrant for his arrest in 2017, he went into hiding with priests from the Catholic Church to ensure his safety. As of 2025, Matobato has escaped the Philippines, aided by priests of the Church, and remains in hiding following persistent death threats against him.

## Early life and career

Matobato grew up in an impoverished household and is mostly illiterate. He worked as security guard before joining the "Heinous Crimes Unit" in 1988. Matobato specialized in body disposal, which involved slicing corpses into smaller parts before burying them into "Laud quarry", named after a policeman who owned the quarry and its firing range, or off a bridge in San Rafael, Davao City which ran over the Davao River. He recounts that in 2009, he began to kill others who weren't criminals—including businessmen, politicians, and journalists—at the command of Duterte. The alleged hit list also included former Commission on Human Rights chairwoman Leila de Lima, who had been investigating the Davao Death Squad and extrajudicial killings in Davao.
In 2013, he withdrew from the Davao Death Squad. He then surrendered to the Commission on Human Rights in August 21, 2014, and later applied to be part of the Department of Justice's Witness Protection Program in September of that year. A few days before Rodrigo Duterte won the 2016 Philippine presidential election, he left the program and went into hiding. Former senator Antonio Trillanes later stated that one of outgoing president Benigno Aquino III's last acts as president was to order that Matobato be transferred out of official custody and into the custody of a senior member of the Catholic Church. A priest helped Matobato contact de Lima, a senator at the time and a critic of Duterte's drug war, who then met up with him in early September 2016.

## Senate hearing

Matobato appeared before the Philippine Senate Senate Justice Committee on September 15, 2016 during a hearing on extrajudicial killings, having been invited by De Lima who chaired the committee. At the hearing, he narrated his experiences and even revealed names of policemen he worked with in the past. He confessed that he had killed many people, including an alleged terrorist named Sali Makdum. Matobato further recounted that Duterte, the Davao City mayor at the time, once emptied an Uzi in killing a National Bureau of Investigation official only known as "Amisola", though the President denied ties with Matobato and claimed not knowing him.
Matobato says he was among the names listed under Davao City Hall's Civil Security Unit (CSU) although he was considered a "ghost employee." From 1988 to 2013, Matobato said hundreds were killed in the 25-year span of his service to Davao's CSU. Senator Alan Peter Cayetano questioned Matobato, pointing out how in his testimonies, he changed his stance from "pretending to have personal knowledge" to "hearsay." Retired policeman Arturo Lascañas, who Matobato named as his handler in the DDS, was brought to the Senate in October to testify. There, he denied the existence of the DDS and allegations that he was part of it. In February 2017, Lascañas recanted his earlier statements, admitting that he had been forced to lie under oath fearing the safety of his family.
Shortly after Matobato's testimony, De Lima was removed from her position as chairwoman of the Senate Justice Committee. The House Justice Committee also began hearings on allegations that De Lima had been receiving payments from drug lords imprisoned at the New Bilibid Prison in exchange for preferential treatment. The hearings led to her imprisonment and court charges filed in 2017, which were all dropped by 2024.
Following the hearing, Matobato was denied Senate protection by then-Senate President Koko Pimentel. Instead, his protection was facilitated by the office of Trillanes. On October 7, 2016, Matobato was turned over by Trillanes to the Philippine National Police after an arrest warrant was issued against him by a Davao municipal trial court. The warrant stemmed from a failure to appear at his arraignment for a case of illegal possession of firearms, filed in 2014. He was kept at Camp Crame for a week, and was later released after posting a bail of ₱30,000. Trillanes then continued providing protection for Matobato after his release. He filed murder, kidnapping, and crimes against humanity charges against Duterte and other alleged DDS members in December 2016, through his lawyer, Jude Sabio. He was arrested again on March 6, 2017 for a frustrated murder charge, where he posted a ₱200,000 bail. He went into hiding again in 2017, after the Panabo Regional Trial Court issued a non-bailable warrant for his arrest in connection to the kidnapping of Sali Makdum on March 27.

## International Criminal Court case

On April 24, 2017, representing Matobato, Sabio filed a 77-page complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Duterte and his subordinates titled "The Situation of Mass Murder in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte: The Mass Murderer" to its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda. Aside from President Duterte, the complaint included Senators Richard Gordon and Alan Peter Cayetano, House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno, PNP Chief Ronald dela Rosa, Police Colonels Edilberto Leonardo, Royina Garma, and Sanson Buenaventura, NBI Director Dante A. Gierran, and Solicitor General Jose Calida.
On January 14, 2020, Sabio, accompanied by now-disbarred attorney Larry Gadon, announced that he was withdrawing his complaint at the ICC. Sabio would claim that the withdrawal was due to his refusal to be a part of the politics of Senators Trillanes and de Lima, Congressman Gary Alejano, as well as the Liberal Party against President Duterte. Bensouda responded that Sabio's withdrawal would not affect the case, since there were 57 other communications to the ICC against Duterte.
Following persistent death threats, by January 2025 Matobato fled the Philippines with his wife and two stepchildren using a fake passport. Posing as a gardener, he left the country together with two Catholic priests who negotiated his escape. He was brought under the protection of the ICC, and gave a deposition for the court to "secure his statements and testimonies." The Bureau of Immigration began investigating Matobato's escape from the country, and identified the fake name he used during immigration. Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs reported that Matobato did not have any passport records under his name.