TWO inmates who testified before a House panel on Thursday said they killed three Chinese drug convicts in the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in 2016 on the orders of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
Fernando Magdadaro and Leopoldo Tan Jr. said that police officers had asked them to kill the three Chinese drug convicts who were also detained in the Davao Prison and Penal Farm in exchange for P1 million and their freedom.
Tan said he was told the killings had the blessing from the top.
Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. (2nd from left) answers lawmakers’ questions during the hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
He said that after he and Magdadaro did the killing, he overheard a call that Supt. Gerardo Padilla, who was in charge of the penal farm. Then Padilla told his companions, “The President called and congratulated me.”
“I knew that Superintendent Padilla was talking to President Duterte because I was familiar with his voice,” he said in Filipino.
The so-called quad committee — composed of the committees of Dangerous Drugs, Public Order and Safety, Human Rights, and Public Accounts — later agreed to invite the former president to testify before the panel “in the spirit of fairness.”
The committee also agreed to invite Padilla to its probe.
Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) Director General Gregorio Catapang Jr. said during the hearing that Padilla was still in the service.
“He’s assigned with the BuCor and he’s the director for reformation,” Catapang Jr. said.
Catapang Jr. told journalists they will present Padilla in the next hearing.
Earlier in the hearing, Magdadaro said that Tan had approached him for help to do the killings.
He said Tan told him they were on the side of the government, and were promised freedom and some money.
But Tan said neither of them were freed, although their wives received P1 million each.
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
Fernando P. Magdadaro and Leopoldo Untalan Tan Jr. stand as resource persons for alleged extrajudicial killings under the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte during a quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Aug. 22, 2024. They claimed that they were hired as killers for three Chinese drug lords in 2016. Following the statements of Magdadaro and Tan, the committee ruled to invite Duterte. PHOTO BY JOHN ORVEN VERDOTE
The committee also decided to invite Arthur Narsolis, whom Tan said had recruited him to do the killings.
When asked during the hearing whether Narsolis told him who ordered the killing, Tan said only that it had the blessings of the higher-ups. He said he understood this to mean that the go-ahead came from the top of the Duterte administration.
Former presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a Facebook post on Thursday, “Res inter alios acta. Confessions bind only confessants and not third parties. No probative value as to third parties such as FPRRD.”
Former Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo dismissed as a mere “demolition job” the claim of two inmates linking Duterte to the 2016 killings of three convicted Chinese drug lords.
“The demolition job on the Dutertes is in full swing. The enemies of FPRRD (former president Rodrigo Duterte) are using convicted felons of murders and drug trafficking to link him to the murders of the three Chinese detainees of which they were the perpetrators on the basis of their bare allegations,” Panelo said in a statement.
Panelo, who served as Duterte’s chief presidential legal counsel, questioned the credibility of “those convicts,” whom, he said, “have nothing to lose since they are jailed for life.”
When Duterte was in power, however, his officials used a similar approach — getting convicts to testify against one of his harshest critics, former senator Leila de Lima, who was detained for years before all the charges against her were dropped.
Thursday was not the first time that a Duterte was named in the quad-committee hearings.
During the first quad-committee hearing on August 16, former Bureau of Customs intelligence officer Jimmy Guban said Undersecretary Benny Antiporda sent emissaries in 2018 to warn him that he will die if he tags Davao City 1st District Rep. Paolo Duterte, lawyer Manases Carpio — husband of Vice President Sara Duterte — and former economic adviser Michael Yang in the shipment of illegal drugs in 2018.
Representative Duterte and Antiporda have separately denied Guban’s allegations.
Former president Duterte and other top officials of his administration are being investigated by the International Criminal Court in connection with alleged crimes against humanity for the death of thousands of drug suspects in police operations during his tenure.
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