FORMER Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte told a senate hearing today that he had maintained a death squad of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao.

Mr Duterte, however, denied authorising police to gun down thousands of “suspects” in a bloody crackdown on illegal drugs he had ordered as president and which is the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity.

The former president attended the televised inquiry in his first public appearance since his term ended in 2022. The senate is looking into the drug killings under Mr Duterte, which were unprecedented in their scale in recent Philippine history.

Mr Duterte acknowledged without elaborating that he once maintained a death squad of seven “gangsters” to deal with criminals when he was city mayor, before he became president.

Pressed to provide more details, the former president said he would explain further in the next hearing.

He said he would take full responsibility for the killings that happened while he was president from 2016 to 2022. But he said he never ordered his national police chiefs, who also attended the hearing, to undertake extrajudicial killings.

“I’m puzzled why the Justice Department hasn’t filed any case,” Mr Duterte said. “I’ve been killing people for a long time and they haven’t filed any case up to now?”

Former senator Leila de Lima said there was adequate evidence and witnesses of the extrajudicial killings but they were scared of testifying against Mr Duterte when he was in power.

The senate hearing is continuing.