MANILA, Philippines — Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told a Senate inquiry on Monday that he maintained a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as mayor of a town in the southern Philippines.

Duterte, however, denied authorizing police to shoot thousands of suspects as part of a bloody crackdown on illegal drugs that he ordered as president and which is the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity.

Duterte, 79, attended the televised investigation in his first public appearance since his term ends in 2022. The Senate is investigating drug-related killings under Duterte, which were unprecedented in their scale in the recent history of the Philippines.

Duterte admitted, without elaborating, that he once led a death squad of seven “gangsters” to deal with criminals when he was the long-time mayor of Davao City before becoming president.

“I can make a confession now if you want,” Duterte said. “I had a death squad of seven people, but they weren’t police, they were gangsters too.”

“I will ask a gangster to kill someone,” Duterte said. “If you don’t kill (this person), I will kill you now.”

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III, who oversaw the investigation, and Senator Risa Hontiveros, pressed Duterte to provide more details, but the former president responded in unclear terms and said he would explain further during the next hearing.

Often swearing during the hearing, Duterte said he would take full responsibility for killings committed while he was president from 2016 to 2022. But he said he never ordered his leaders to national police, who also attended the investigation, to carry out extrajudicial executions.

“Have I ever told you to kill a criminal?” Duterte asked his former police chiefs, among them Ronald Dela Rosa, the current senator who first implemented Duterte’s campaign against illegal drugs as national police chief.

“No, Mr. President,” dela Rosa replied.

Former Sen. Leila de Lima, one of Duterte’s harshest critics who investigated the drug-related killings in Davao, said there was enough evidence and witnesses to the extrajudicial killings, but They were afraid to testify against Duterte.

De Lima was arrested very early under President Duterte over drug charges, which she says were fabricated to prevent her from continuing her investigation in the Senate. She was cleared of charges and released after more than six years in detention last year.

“This man, a former mayor of Davao City and a former president of the Republic of the Philippines, has evaded justice and accountability for so long,” de Lima said, sitting next to the former president.

“We have not held him accountable after all these years,” she said, adding that witnesses could now surface and help prosecute Duterte and his associates.

Duterte appeared defiant throughout the hearing.

“If I am given another chance, I will eliminate you all,” Duterte said of drug traffickers and criminals, who, he added, resumed their criminal activities after resigning from the presidency.

One of Asia’s most unorthodox contemporary leaders, Duterte ended his turbulent six-year term in June 2022, capping more than three decades in an often politically turbulent country, where he built a political reputation for his outbursts of swearing and his contempt for human beings. human rights and the West while reaching out to China and Russia.

Activists considered him “a human rights calamity”, not only because of the many deaths caused by his so-called war on drugs, but also because of his brazen attacks on critical media, the Dominant Catholic Church and political opposition.