PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte is willing to face the International Criminal Court over the alleged thousands of extrajudicial killings linked to his war on drugs, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said Thursday.
In a press briefing, Roque said the President wants to be in court and put the prosecutor on the stand and to ask who prodded the ICC to proceed with a preliminary examination of the Philippine situation, because he suspected it was the work of “domestic enemies of the state.”
Roque also clarified that there was no formal complaint yet filed.
The preliminary examination, he said, was aimed at determining if there is a basis to conduct a formal investigation into the charges lodged against the President.
He added that the investigation was only “a waste of the court’s time and resources.”
“He’s more than willing to face trial.
He’s sick and tired of being accused,” Roque said of the President.
The ICC’s website carried no announcement or information concerning the complaint against Duterte.
Roque, formerly a human rights lawyer, said the ICC had no jurisdiction over the war on drugs, because this was a sovereign issue.
Pending cases in the Philippine courts showed that domestic legal processes had not been exhausted, so the ICC would have no justification to go beyond its preliminary examination, he added.
“Our mission in The Hague was informed that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is opening a preliminary examination on the alleged acts associated with the campaign against illegal drugs covering the period of July 2016,” Roque said.
“As I have already said, this is only a preliminary investigation. The Office of the Prosecutor is merely exercising his mandate to determine whether there is reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into a situation pursuant to criteria in the Rome statute namely: jurisdiction, admissibility and interest of justice,” Roque told reporters.
“I will reiterate that the preliminary examination is not a formal preliminary investigation.
Duterte, in previous speeches dared the ICC to bring him to trial and said he was willing to rot in jail to save Filipinos from the scourge of crime and drugs. His tirades against the court are notorious, and include calling it “bull—t”, “hypocritical” and “useless.”
He has also threatened to withdraw the country’s ICC membership and said lawyers in Europe were “rotten,” “stupid,” and had a “brain like a pea.”
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, a critic of the President, said the ICC action proved that he is not above the law.
“This development should jolt Duterte into realizing that he is not above the law,” he said.
“More importantly, this is the first step for the victims’ families’ quest for justice.”
Trillanes said he welcomes the ICC’s decision to conduct preliminary examination.
Jude Sabio, lawyer of Edgard Matobato, said Duterte and his cohorts will face preliminary examination by the ICC prosecutor as a prelude to a formal criminal investigation.
Matobato claimed to be a hitman of the so-called Davao Death Squad, which he said was created by Duterte to go after criminals and personal enemies.
The ICC Office of the Prosecutor is acting on two communications filed by Sabio, Trillanes and Magdalo Party-list Rep. Gary Alejano in 2017.
Citing the number of people allegedly killed by the DDS in Davao City and in his war on drugs since becoming president in June 2016, Sabio said that Duterte has been undertaking murder “repeatedly, unchangingly, and continuously” in the Philippines.
The supplemental communications of Trillanes and Alejano urged ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to conduct a preliminary examination “to provide a glimmer of hope for the thousands of victims that Duterte’s impunity would soon end.”
Their 45-page document also highlighted the various pronouncements of Duterte regarding the killings of criminals, specifically drug addicts.
With Sara D. Fabunan