Dante Gierran denies Matobato's allegation

MANILA – A man claiming to be a member of the infamous Davao Death Squad (DDS) linked National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Dante Gierran to the killing of a man in 2007.

Edgar Matobato, who claimed in a Senate Justice and Human Rights Committee hearing that he worked as an assassin for long-time Davao City Rodrigo Duterte for over two decades, said Gierran led the death squad in one of their operations in 2007 where a man was “fed to a crocodile.”

Matobato said their target, a suspected kidnapper, was taken from Sarangani Province and brought to Davao del Sur where he was eventually killed.

The self-confessed hitman said the victim was hogtied and inflicted with incision wounds before being pushed to the water.

“Hindi pa siya (Gierran) director, ordinaryo pa lang na NBI, magkasama na kami. Almost 15 years kami magkasama ni Atty. Gierran. May hinuhuli kami sa Sarangani Province… Doon na namin dinala sa Digos, Davao del Sur,” Matobato said.

(Gierran was not yet a big-timer in NBI when we met. We have known each other for 15 years. We abducted a man from Sarangani Province and brought him to Davao del Sur.)

“Hindi ko alam ang pangalan basta pinatay namin. Pero ang pagpagtay ‘di na ginamitan ng dahas…Pinakain namin sa buwaya,” he said.

“I don’t know the man’s name but we killed him. We killed him without much violence. We just fed him to a crocodile.”

Pressed to clarify whether the man was indeed eaten alive by a crocodile, Matobato said he just assumed the man was eaten by the crocodile when he was pushed to the water."

GIERRAN DENIES RAPS

Gierran dismissed Matobato’s claim.

“Twenty-six years na po ako sa NBI (I’ve been with the NBI for 26 years) and in these long years, I have been conducting myself in such ways that I give everyone his due, perform my job with honesty, objectivity, and fairness,” he said.

“Marahil po may hidden agenda ang testigo sa pagdawit sa name ko kasi maraming inggit po pagka appoint sa akin bilang director ng NBI. Kilala ko naman si Matobato na witness pero never po na sinama ko siya sa aking mga trabaho dati sa Davao.”

(Maybe the witness has an agenda for implicating me. I know many people are jealous that I got appointed as NBI director. I know Matobato as a witness but I never brought him to my operations in Davao.)