BOTH the defense and prosecution teams have expressed confidence in the strength of their respective arguments in the crimes against humanity case against former President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court.
As the four-day confirmation of charges hearing at The Hague ended yesterday, the three-judge ICC panel now has 60 days to decide whether to proceed to a full trial.
The judges can confirm all of the charges and proceed to trial, throw out some of the charges, or reject the case outright, in which case Duterte would walk free.
Summing up for the prosecution, ICC prosecutor Julian Nicholls said Duterte killed thousands during his anti-drug campaign.
“He’s proud of his killings. He wants to be remembered for them,” he said.
“Decades of murdering his own people, murdering the children of the Philippines, and he claims that he did it all for his country. He doesn’t deny it.”
“He ran a death squad in Davao (City) that he created. He ran it for over 20 years before he became president. His promise was to kill thousands, and he did,” Nicholls added.
The prosecution has put forward 76 cases of alleged murder, which they say is an “emblematic fraction” of those killed, which rights groups say number thousands.
The defense has said there is no direct linkage between Duterte and any killings.
Duterte’s lead counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, argued the prosecution failed to show sufficient evidence linking him to the deaths of three named victims — former Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa, Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and civilian Benjamin Visda.
Espinosa and Parojinog were listed as “high-value targets” or HVTs in the so-called “kill list,” but Kaufman disputed that HVT was a code for a “witch hunt.”
“HVT is not a code for an instruction to kill or a witch hunt. It was a prioritization tool within anti-drug operations applied across regions and units on the basis of intelligence assessments, alleged position within drug networks or inclusion on watch lists. Classification does not imply selection for murder any more than it is proof of unlawful intent,” the defense lawyer said.
Duterte has not been in the courtroom — the defense said he is too ill to attend, while victims said he does not want to face the loved ones of those he killed.
He faces three counts of crimes against humanity over his so-called “war on drugs” when he was mayor of Davao City and then as president of the Philippines.
Gilbert Andres, a lawyer representing victims, summed up by saying that his clients experienced defense rebuttals “like their murdered loved-ones are being murdered again.”
He called on the court to confirm the charges so that the victims can be “reintegrated into their communities.”
Duterte was arrested in Manila in March last year, flown to the Netherlands and has since been held at the ICC’s detention unit at Scheveningen Prison.
The first of three counts against Duterte concerns his alleged involvement as a co-perpetrator in 19 murders carried out between 2013 and 2016 while he was mayor of Davao City.
The second relates to 14 murders of so-called HVTs in 2016 and 2017 when he was president.
The third charge covers 43 murders committed during “clearance” operations of lower-level alleged drug users or pushers across the Philippines between 2016 and 2018.
