DRUG CRACKDOWN

Rodrigo Duterte: I Killed Three Men

“It happened and I cannot lie about it.”

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he personally killed three men while he was the mayor of Davao, despite his spokesman’s claim that he hadn’t. “I killed about three of them. ... I don’t know how many bullets from my gun went inside their bodies. It happened and I cannot lie about it,” Duterte said. The declaration comes just two days after he said, more generally, that he would ride on a motorcycle and “patrol the streets, looking for trouble ... looking for a confrontation so I could kill.” On Friday, though, his spokesman Martin Andanar said to not take Duterte literally. “That is the style of the president, ever since he was a mayor he would talk that way,” Andanar said. Nearly 6,000 people are believed to have been killed since Duterte took office as part of his crackdown on drug dealers and addicts.