The arrogance, insults and threats unleashed by exes President Rodrigo Duterte in a Senate inquiry he brought back the nightmare of the bloody “war on drugs” for many families of the thousands of victims who were shot under his leadership.

Speaking under oath in Monday’s televised hearing on the killings, the defiantly combative Duterte returned to the national spotlight for the first time since leaving office in 2022 with little remorse.

He got away with it again, critics say.

“If I get another chance, I will wipe you all out,” Duterte, 79, who is seeking a new term as mayor of his southern hometown of Davao, said of drug traffickers and criminals.

Duterte again denied authorizing the extrajudicial killing of drug suspects, saying there were no “state-sponsored crimes.” But he admitted that as mayor of Davao City before he became president, he kept a small “death squad” of gangsters he ordered to take out other criminals.

Duterte’s profanity-laced outbursts scared Randy delos Santos, who was invited by the Senate to speak about the police killing of his nephew Kian during Duterte’s apparent war on drugs. It felt, he said, like a nightmare returning.

“I had this terrifying feeling that thousands of innocent people could be shot again,” Delos Santos told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I was wondering why he was allowed to speak disrespectfully and given a scene to reveal his past apologies.”

Duterte changed politics in the Philippines

The thousands of killings – which human rights groups estimate could exceed 20,000 – under Duterte’s administration from 2016 to 2022 were unprecedented in recent Philippine history and sparked an International Criminal Court investigation as a possible crime against humanity .

They have also become a delicate fault line in the increasingly hostile rivalry between Duterte and his children, including Vice President Sara Duterte and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. They have had a bitter political fallout on key issues. While Duterte has maintained cozy ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Marcos has broadened military and defense ties with the United States and its Western allies.

“It is unfortunate that drug-related crime is on the rise again. Every day you can read about children being raped, people killed and robbed, and recently a drug warehouse was raided in the Malacanang complex,” Duterte said, referring to the presidential palace in Manila. “The purveyors of this threat are back in business.”

Duterte previously accused Marcos of being a drug addict and a weak leader. Marcos had countered that Duterte was using fentanyl, a painkiller and a powerful opioid.

With Duterte appearing frail and misstating his age of 73 at one point, the day-long Senate hearing also served as the latest reality check on the political constraints he and his family face after he relinquished power.

Duterte has been one of Asia’s most unorthodox leaders and has made a controversial political name for himself for his deadly campaign against crime, intertwining outbreaks and contempt for human rights and the West. He once called the pope a “son of a bitch” for triggering a monstrous roadblock during a visit to Manila and told then-President Obama to “go to hell” for criticizing his brutal drug crackdown.

Duterte’s words have become a trademark of his political persona and some have considered him the Trump of Asia.

During a heated exchange on Monday, Duterte raised his voice at Senator Risa Hontiveros, a staunch human rights activist, who said his campaign had killed 122 children, including a baby. Hontiveros asked the president overseeing the hearing to restrain the increasingly volatile Duterte, who continued as he spoke. He later stopped and apologized.

“You’re trying to take me away from semantics,” Duterte told Hontiveros, who replied, “You’re caught up in your own words.”

“You’ve never been a mayor, a prosecutor… I’ve been a prosecutor, a mayor, a president, and I know my job. You should talk like, ‘You son of a bitch, stop or I’ll kill you,'” Duterte told the senators.

The killings left deep scars

A Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Flavie Villanueva, showed during the hearing a list of more than 300 victims, many of them supporters of poor families, who were killed during Duterte’s crackdown. The roll of white paper with the names of the dead that the priest unrolled was so long that it touched the carpeted floor.

Former senator Leila de Lima, one of Duterte’s most vocal critics who was arrested and detained for years during his presidency, confronted him during the hearing.

The drug charges against her, she said, were fabricated by Duterte and his officials to stop her investigation into drug crimes. She was cleared of charges and released last year.

“This man … for so long has evaded justice and accountability,” de Lima said of Duterte, who sat next to her.

Senator Jinggoy Estrada questioned why de Lima did not file any criminal complaint against Duterte for so long.

Witnesses against Duterte, she said, were afraid to come forward during his presidency when large-scale killings took place.

“There was an atmosphere of fear, a culture of fear and impunity,” she said. “Hopefully many more will come out now.”

Gomez writes for the Associated Press.