EDITORIAL - Policing Phl borders

Years ago, Edgar Matobato was dismissed as a perjured witness and polluted source by then senator Panfilo Lacson, who headed a Senate committee that investigated alleged extrajudicial killings committed by a so-called Davao Death Squad when Rodrigo Duterte was the city mayor.

Lacson has been pushing for heavier penalties for perjury. He has said the International Criminal Court, which is investigating Duterte and several of his former aides for possible crimes against humanity, will need heavier evidence and cannot rely on the statements of persons such as Matobato and former police officer Arturo Lascañas, a self-confessed hitman in the DDS.

Since 2016, Lascañas and Matobato have narrated to Congress gruesome details of the alleged killings. Lascañas left the country for Singapore in April 2017 and has not returned since. There was no case filed against him and no order preventing his departure.

A spirited legal battle is expected in assessing the credibility of the stories of Lascañas and Matobato, who claims to have killed about 50 people between 1988 and 2013 as a “force multiplier” in the DDS.

What is clear is that Matobato managed to leave the Philippines last year without being detected by the Bureau of Immigration, despite a warrant for his arrest for the non-bailable offenses of kidnapping and murder. The warrant was issued in March 2017 by the Panabo City Regional Trial Court for the kidnapping and killing of terror suspect Sali Makdum in 2002 on Samal Island in Davao.

A story dated Jan. 5 and published by The New York Times, in which he repeated much of his stories about the DDS killings, included a photo of Matobato leaving the Philippines through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He was not in disguise, but the report said he used fake travel papers under a different identity to fly to Dubai and then to another foreign destination.

The Bureau of Immigration, which had previously said it had no record of Matobato leaving the country, said yesterday it would investigate the circumstances of his departure. The BI should find the story worrisome as it comes on the heels of the mysterious departure from the country of high-profile individuals, among them former Bamban mayor Alice Guo and her supposed sister Shiela and former presidential spokesman Harry Roque.

Guo says she and her sister took a yacht from the city of Manila. Roque showed up at the Philippine mission in Dubai. It should be just as easy to leave the country for someone like former police superintendent Rafael Dumlao, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo. The government clearly needs to do a better job of policing the country’s borders.