“His words during the Senate hearing will likely be used against him.”
Maybe we cannot blame those in the gallery who were heard applauding and erupting into cheers after former president Rodrigo Duterte finished an hours-long testimony before the first hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon Subcommittee last month.
After all, Duterte practically monopolized the hearing, egged on by certain sympathetic senators, his language punctuated by crisp cuss words in the vernacular.
But did his statements help acquit him from any legal accountability for his bloody war on drugs from 2016 to 2022?
We don’t think so. Duterte’s admission that there was indeed a Davao Death Squad, which he ordered to kill suspected drug offenders when he was the mayor of Davao City for over two decades, offers more than ample proof that he masterminded what later turned into a nationwide pogrom with even top police generals and lower-level officers dutifully implementing his ‘kill, kill, kill’ public pronouncements for which he must now face the music.
Even Duterte’s vehement denial that he put up a reward system that practically incentivized the police organization throughout the country to kill as many as they could, mostly those from poor communities, allegedly because they fought back (‘nanlaban’) when police operatives came to knock on their doors and tried to hale them to court, cannot be believed. Retired Police Colonel Royina Garma confirmed the existence of such a reward system for the “neutralization” or rub-out of those deeply involved in drug trafficking, an admission concurred in by another police colonel.
As we know, the six-year war on drugs led to an official death toll of some 6,200 suspected drug traffickers and users. Human rights groups here and abroad estimate the death toll to be as high as 30,000. That number certainly qualifies as a crime against humanity that requires a thorough probe by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In fact, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV has said he has already sent copies of the transcripts of the Senate and House hearings on Duterte’s drug war to the ICC as additional evidence in the charge of crimes against humanity against the ex-president. The ICC has already acknowledged that it has received the transcripts.
Human rights lawyers representing the families of drug war victims are saying that they will also hand over documents to the ICC, including the so-called “narcolist” presented by resource persons during the House quad committee hearings, to further pin down Duterte’s accountability in the drug war. The Duterte narcolist included the names of local government officials with alleged links to the drug trade.
Atty. Neri Colmenares has indicated that he “would not be surprised” if the ICC terminated its investigation and issued a warrant of arrest against the former president before the end of the year. He said that Duterte’s admission that he urged policemen to provoke the victims of extrajudicial killings to fight back rendered the argument of self-defense useless, making him a co-conspirator of each police officer.
Duterte’s claim that he would “take full responsibility” for the drug war killings was “just drama” since police officers cannot blame the former president for the killings because “unlawful orders are not a defense,” according to Colmenares
For its part, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) has emphasized that it would make police officers and individuals who were involved in extrajudicial killings accountable for their actions: “As more details emerge from the recent Senate Blue Ribbon sub-committee proceedings, the CHR hopes that these efforts will ultimately bring accountability to the perpetrators and all those involved in extrajudicial killings (EJK) during the previous administration’s anti-illegal drugs campaign.”
While Duterte, a lawyer and former prosecutor, may have been unaware that his statements during the hearing are self-incriminating and could prove to be his undoing should the ICC decide to issue a warrant for his arrest, it is clear to his former police chief and now Sen. Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa that the former president’s admissions made under oath during the Senate hearing, including having a “death squad,” could be used against him. While de la Rosa dismissed the ex-president’s admission of the existence of a death squad as “superlatives to scare off criminals”, it appears that Duterte himself only managed to dig a deeper hole for himself in the Senate hearing.
(Email: ernhil@yahoo.com)
