On the third day (Feb. 26) of the Confirmation of Charges Hearing of the Rodrigo Duterte case in the International Criminal Court, defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman intoned, rather sarcastically:
The same goes for another witness’s outlandish assertion that bodies were thrown into the sea off the coast of Davao. Well, the whole (Davao) Gulf could have been dredged, but not one executed corpse has surfaced.”
Kaufman is totally and absolutely wrong that no corpse had surfaced. I am very sure that his reference for the Davao Gulf burials was the Edgar Matobato testimonies. In which case I am very sure as well that Kaufman was lying.
Of course he has a guaranteed limitless access to the entire body of evidence submitted, among which are the notarized testimonies of Arturo Lascañas and Edgar Matobato. If I had read both, the more Kaufman has.
Kaufman lies as a technique called evidence skepticism. Human rights writer Carlos Conde, who was seated beside me in the ICC hearing, has written about this. These are “sustained attacks on the reliability, sourcing, and context of prosecution evidence.” Kaufman is obviously playing to win public approval by making it grow skeptical about the evidence. But which public will he win over except only the DDS?
The late Redemptorist priest Fr. Amado Picardal conducted an interview with Matobato on June 22, 2016 before Duterte had even assumed the presidency. Matobato would later come out in the Senate in September 2016.
Fr. Picardal was truly ahead of his time. In 2021, he and I conspired to translate the interview to English that we then submitted to the ICC for evidence. A key editorial executive of a digital publication e-mailed me she “was the first ever” to interview Matobato on March 29, 2023. Like Kaufman, many lie.
Here’s what Matobato told Fr. Picardal:
In 2009, we killed the people of Prospero Nograles when he ran for mayor. The victims were picked up from their hotel , they were from Manila. Then we killed them, we brought them to Davao del Norte, in Samal Island and we disposed of them in the sea, one woman and four men.
We were told that they were officials; people of Matillano and Palparan who were active at that time and who both had supported Nograles. The victims were bodyguards of Nograles. Our aim was really the two officials (Matillano and Palparan) but we were not able to get hold of them, so we picked up the bodyguards.
First we took them inside a van, a Hi-Ace, then we tied them, then we slashed their bodies and tied them to hollow blocks. But one body had floated and this was recorded in Samal Island’s Kaputian District, which was investigated by PO2 Hector Solano. One of the bodies had floated and there was a complaint by the barangay. The barangay captain was Loreno of barangay Panggubatan where one body of Nograles’s bodyguards, which we had tied with weights then loaded on a pump boat to be disposed of in the sea , was retrieved.
Then the woman who was also killed was a barangay captain of Marilog, or was she an ex-captain? Nevertheless she was a leader of Nograles and her body had floated to Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur and it was there that it was found.
If Kaufman wanted corroboration, his work was as easy as ABC. The leads are provided: police records of Barangay Panggubatan, Kaputian District, Island Garden City of Samal that PO2 Hector Solano investigated. Or the police records of Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur. If the police records have been erased, as is said to be practiced there, Kaufman can turn to the Davao City periodicals of the day.
But here’s the catch: Kaufman will never do corroboration. It will be antithetical to his cause to free Duterte. If he corroborates, it will confirm his “myth” – the Davao Death Squad exists. And that it kills not only the dregs of society; it also kills Duterte’s political opponents.
Arturo Lascañas, on page 28 in his 186-page testimony, related how the DDS acquired the “Death Boat”:
The Davao Gulf area (high seas) in Samal Island. It was maintained and secured by Police Senior Master Sergeant Sanson ‘Sonny’ Buenaventura. With the use of our motorized ‘Death Boat,’ Heinous Crime Task Force DDS, as well as other death squads from different police stations and police special units, threw dead bodies into the sea surrounding Samal Island and Davao region. The ‘Death Boat’ which we purchased for P250,000 was registered under the name of Erik Branzuela Barnes.
In the Philippines,sea vessels of three gross tons or less are registered through the City Agriculture Office in coordination with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA).
But Kaufman will not go and check, or else he will find the records of the Death Boat registered under Erik Branzuela Barnes. He will lose his case if he does.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
