Former Senator Leila De Lima reveals the reward system of the alleged Davao Death Squad, which she investigated during her time as chair of the Commission on Human Rights.
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00:00The history of the DDS can be divided into two, the period from 1988 to 1998 and the period from 2001 to 2016.
00:11So may break, po.
00:13The break in these two periods coincides with then-Mayor Rodrigo Duterte's hiatus as mayor of Davao City
00:21when he was elected congressman instead of mayor in 1998 due to the three-term limit.
00:29So for brevity, I'll refer to the former mayor as MRRD.
00:35According to a witness in the 2009 CHR investigation,
00:40during the first period of the DDS from 1988 to 2000, the assassins were paid $15,000 for every victim,
00:49$5,000 goes to the police handler and $10,000 to the assassins
00:55who at the time consisted of rebel returnees aside from the active-duty policemen who were their handlers.
01:03Their safe house was located inside the Nabalcom compound in Barangay San Pedro, Davao.
01:09After the summary execution of targeted victims, the DDS members would regroup at their safe house and divide the reward.
01:18During that time, MRRD sometimes personally gave out the kill orders and the reward money directly to the assassins themselves.
01:29Upon the return of MRRD as mayor of Davao in 2001,
01:35the DDS was upgraded into the Hinoos Crimes Investigation Section or ACIS located at the Almendras Gym compound.
01:46The ACIS was an official unit of the DCPO or the Davao City Police Office.
01:53The ACIS consists of both active-duty PNP and civilian abanteros or hitmen.
02:03Most of the hitmen are rebel returnees.
02:06They are supervised by PNP handlers.
02:09Each handler supervises three members.
02:13The task of the PNP handler is to give orders to his members as well as be responsible for their protection.
02:20According to the CHR witness, he was given a regular monthly salary of $5,000.
02:26During this time, the reward given to a team for every victim was anywhere from $13,000 to $15,000.
02:34$3,000 to $5,000 goes to the PNP handler.
02:37$7,000 to $8,000 was shared among the rebel returnees and $500 to $1,000 to civilian informants.
02:46The ACIS civilian personnel or rebel returnees directly received salaries as auxiliary service workers.
02:55The funds for their salaries came from the office of the mayor.
03:00Functions have also been specialized with members being designated to do either office support or field work.
03:08A team of one PNP handler and three civilian abanteros was given an average of three targets every month.
03:18May I now go also to the revelation of Arturo LascaƱas.
03:27The findings that we received, although the others were unofficial findings of the CHR investigation,
03:33were eventually confirmed by Edgar Matubato and Arturo LascaƱas when they went public at the Senate
03:40with their stories and executed affidavits in 2016 and 2017.
03:47Matubato executed an affidavit and was filed with the ombudsman as a criminal complaint against Duterte and other DDS members.
03:56The criminal complaint is still pending. It's the office of the ombudsman.
04:01The most comprehensive account on the DDS from its founding in 1988 up to 2016 is the affidavit of Arturo LascaƱas,
04:11which was submitted to the ICC.
04:14This affidavit consists of 186 pages of gory details on the sociopathic behavior of Duterte as founder and leader of the DDS.
04:27The 186-page affidavit, actually it was serialized in an investigative or feature story of Rappler in November 2021.
04:38Apparently, Rappler got hold of a copy of this affidavit and also the ICC's third agreement on limited use of information dated November 11, 2020.
04:52This instrument gave LascaƱas limited immunity as a witness in the ICC investigation on the Philippine war on drugs.
05:02In 2024, LascaƱas reiterated the contents of his ICC affidavit in another serialized feature, this time published by Veria Files entitled Conversations with Arturo LascaƱas.
05:18This is what LascaƱas said, that during the period 1988 to 1998, so I'm just talking here about the organization because he said a lot of things in his comprehensive affidavit.
05:33So I'm focusing on the organization of DDS because this was the model of the drug war.
05:41According to LascaƱas' ICC affidavit, during the period 1988 to 1998, when the DDS was constituted as the anti-crime task force of MRRD, DDS members were paid anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 for every victim.
06:02This was the reward for the ordinary victims.
06:04The so-called special project killings, they were rewarded anywhere from 100,000 to 1 million pesos depending on the status of the target.
06:18Civilian hitmen called force multipliers were given 3,000 to 5,000 per victim as their share in this reward.
06:29The DDS logistics and finances came from the peace and order or intel fund of MRRD.
06:36This includes weekly gas allowance, monthly cash allowance, and Christmas cash gifts.
06:43LascaƱas also confirmed the CHR findings on the organizational structure of the DDS under the HCIS or Hinos Crimes Investigation Section from 2001 to 2016, and this is as follows.
07:12MRRD, alias Superman, as the highest leader and mastermind of the DDS.
07:19SPO4, Sanson Beneventura, as the logistics finance and death clearance officer.
07:28SPO3, Arturo LascaƱas, as overall team leader for operations and planning.
07:35SPO4, Bienvenido Laud, as team handler and in charge of the Laud Quarry Mass Grave.
07:42And SPO3, Jim Tan, as team handler and in charge of the Mandug Mass Grave.
07:50Actually, Mr. LascaƱas' attachment to his ICC affidavit about the organizational structure of the DDS is more intricate.
08:02What I just mentioned, I just simplified it to show who are really at the top of the DDS hierarchy.
08:09Most of the policemen handlers and their respective teams of civilian force multipliers were under the command of Arturo LascaƱas as operations and planning leader of the DDS.
08:22So I said that must be the devout model mentioned by Colonel Garma.