Former assassin Edgar Matobato testifies before the Philippine Senate.

During a hearing before the Philippine Senate yesterday, 57-year-old man Edgar Matobato revealed shocking details about the Davao Death Squad (DDS), the group of assassins he was a member of and had spread.

The Davao Death Squad is not a strange name in the Philippines.

However, this is the first time information about the activities of this squad has been revealed by a former assassin to the Philippine Senate, and Matobato’s account is even more shocking when he confirms that Mr. Duterte himself ordered DDS.

According to Matobato, the death squad began to form in 1993, as a `liquidation squad` called the `Lambada Boys`.

`Our mission is to destroy criminals such as drug dealers, rapists and robbers. Those are the people we shoot and kill every day,` Matobato said.

HRW’s report said the `Lambada Boys` are managed by current or retired police officers.

The target list is given by the police or village officials, including names, addresses and portraits of the suspects.

The typical tactic of these assassins is to travel in small groups of two or three people on motorbikes without license plates to approach their targets.

A victim was shot dead on the streets of Davao.

According to Matobato, DDS also has other very barbaric methods of killing people.

‘Killing people like crap’

Former assassin Matobato recounted some typical killings that DDS carried out in Davao, including the `mosque massacre` allegedly ordered by Mr. Duterte after the Catholic church in the city

`A few days after the bombing, he ordered us to arrest and kill Muslim suspects, so we only targeted Muslims,` Matobato confessed.

Matobato asserted that by 2013, DDS had built a powerful force of more than 300 assassins, and had killed more than 1,000 people in Davao City, including people who had nothing to do with criminal activities.

Matobato said that when the Philippine Human Rights Commission opened an investigation into the killings in Davao in 2009, Mayor Duterte ordered the DDS to assassinate Leila De Lima, the head of the commission, but the final assassination was

This former DDS member claimed that Mr. Duterte himself once killed people.

Mayor Duterte then allegedly arrived at the scene, and personally shot and killed the agent.

A person close to Mr. Duterte who was also accused of being involved in DDS activities was Paolo Duterte, the Mayor’s son.

Mr. Duterte (blue shirt) holds a submachine gun in his hand during a weapons exhibition.

Matobato told the Senate that after committing many killings, he decided to end his career as an assassin, leaving the death squad in 2013. He was tortured and threatened by members of the squad.

To ensure his safety, Matobato turned himself in to the Philippine Commission on Human Rights and the Department of Justice in 2014 to enter the witness protection program.

In a regular press conference after Matobato’s hearing, Martin Andanar, President Duterte’s press secretary, denied the allegations.

However, in a television interview last year, Mr. Duterte himself admitted that he had a role in a death squad.

Mr. Duterte later retracted the statement, telling reporters that there was no `Davao death squad`.

See more: Philippine President accused of killing 1,000 people