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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte: I stabbed someone to death
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he once stabbed a person to death when he was 16 years old. (AP)
Outspoken Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte added to his legendary list of outrageous claims Thursday when he bragged about stabbing a person to death when he was 16 years old.
In a defiant speech hitting back at critics of his deadly drug crackdown, Duterte said he would go into jails and have “rumbles here, rubles there.”
“At the age of 16, I already killed someone. A real person, a rumble, a stabbing,” Duterte said during a summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, according to the BBC. “I was just 16 years old. It was just over a look. How much more now that I am president.”
A spokesman for Duterte said the remarks had been made “in jest.”
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Duterte, 72, is known for his often incendiary and obscene language during speeches promoting the country’s crackdown on rampant drug use and trafficking.
Since Duterte took office 16 months ago, police said more than 3,960 people have been killed in the war on drugs. Another 2,290 people have been murdered in drug-related crimes, the government said.
Last year, Duterte said he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts and that he even fatally shot criminals while he was mayor of the southern city of Davao to set an example for police.
Thursday was not even the first time he has mentioned stabbing and killing someone while a teenager. In 2015, he told the Philippines edition of Esquire magazine that during a “tumultuous fight in the beach” when he was 17, “maybe I stabbed somebody to death.”
It’s unclear if he was referring to the same incident in Thursday’s speech.