section_path: Background/Davao Death Squad
section_name: Davao Death Squad
paragraph_text: Davao Death Squad
  
  The Davao Death Squad (DDS), a Davao City –based vigilante group linked to Rodrigo Duterte, is estimated to have killed at least a thousand people since the 1990s. According to Human Rights Watch, the group mostly targeted alleged drug dealers, petty criminals, and was involved in forced disappearances, summary executions, and drug dealing.
  
  During an October 2016 Philippine Senate inquiry into extrajudicial killings, opposition Senator Leila de Lima presented a witness, Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed former member of the DDS; Matobato testified that the DDS was taking orders from Duterte and claimed that Duterte himself, while he was still mayor of Davao City, had killed a member of the Department of Justice with an Uzi submachine gun. Duterte dismissed Matobato's claims as a lie, and the Senate probe was terminated on October 13, 2016, for lack of evidence. Arturo Lascañas, a retired police officer who initially denied being a member of the group in the Senate hearing, retracted his statement a year later, backed up Matobato's accusations, and admitted to killing 200 people as a DDS member, claiming that they "were motivated by the reward system... when a killing is ordered and there's a price".