Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has admitted that he has personally killed crime suspects but that he has already "paid" for his "debts to God" and that he is ready "to go to hell" or "rot in jail" for what he did.
Duterte made the admission on Monday as reported by ABS-CBN News.
The 71-year-old president said he does not enjoy killing people but that he had to do it.
"All the bad things I committed in the past, [I paid for that]. I know somehow that I was repaying my debts to God for doing something sometimes wrong," he said.
"I assume full responsibility and if I have to go to hell may I rot in jail for all times," he added.
In an earlier speech on Saturday following his arrival from state visits to Cambodia and Singapore, Duterte said if he had killed criminals when he was mayor of Davao City it was only to protect law-abiding people, The Philippine Daily Inquirer reported.
He denied that he was involved in summary executions.
"At least I killed to protect people. I am not here a dictator killing my political opponents to stay in power," Duterte said.
He recalled that during his time as Davao City mayor, he once joined a police operation to rescue a woman who had been kidnapped. When he saw the kidnappers, he said he fired his M16 rifle.
"Not extrajudicial, there was a firefight," he said. "I might have hit them all or none at all. But the fact is I was there and I fired at them."
Asked how many people he had killed, Duterte replied "maybe one, two, three."
Duterte also told a gathering of Filipinos in Singapore last week that he had killed three people involved in the hostage-taking and killing of an Australian missionary.
The Duterte administration's war on drugs has already left nearly 6,000 people dead since July 1. The President said the nation should expect more deaths as he vowed to kill all drug dealers.
Duterte said he had already asked God for forgiveness "for all my sins and the future sins that I will commit" in eliminating "human monsters."
He said he has done this since he might not have time to pray anymore if he is assassinated.
"So just to be on the safe side, 'God forgive me for killing these idiots. If they are your creation anyway, so that is also your problem,'" he said. "So if you are God, why do you have to create these idiots? That's why they die. God should have created law-abiding citizens like us."
Reacting to Duterte's statements, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights said on Tuesday that the Philippine president committed murder, GMA News reported.
In a statement, High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called on Philippine authorities to investigate Duterte over his admission.
"The killings committed by Mr. Duterte, by his own admission, at a time when he was a mayor, clearly constitute murder," Zeid said.
