Bersamin: PH won’t work with ICC on EJK probe

The government is not interested in giving the International Criminal Court (ICC) access to findings of the ongoing House quad committee investigation into the extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during the bloody war on drugs of the Duterte administration.

Malacañang on Monday flatly rejected calls for the Marcos administration to take into account the revelations of key witnesses in the hearings and to submit the findings to the ICC to help in its probe of EJKs.

“The Philippines will not return to the ICC,” Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said in a statement. “Based on this, the President is not expected to change his mind and now refer the quad comm matter to the ICC.”

Bersamin made the remark in reaction to a statement from the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers for President Marcos to submit the quad committee materials to the ICC.

Human Rights Watch senior researcher Carlos Conde also said that it would be better for the government to cooperate with the ICC by granting investigators access to witnesses and testimonies, given the revelations made by retired Police Col. Royina Garma regarding the drug war.

Local authorities

At a virtual press briefing on Monday, quad committee lead chair Rep. Robert Ace Barbers also maintained that the super panel had no plan to turn over any of its records or documents to the ICC.

“We cannot submit anything to the ICC. We cannot even allow them access to our records. But if they use the proceedings under different social media platforms, they can do so because they’re public,” he said.

“But as far as submitting to the ICC the documents we have, we will not do that,” Barbers emphasized.

For Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, it would be “better” for the quad committee to hand over its findings to the Department of Justice, the National Bureau of Investigation or the Office of the Ombudsman for appropriate investigation and prosecution, noting that “these are the agencies that have the mandate to build on the findings of the congressional committees with respect to criminal matters.”

The Office of the Solicitor General’s role will come in “much later,” he said.

Explosive testimony

In a significant development during last week’s quad committee hearing, Garma claimed that former President Rodrigo Duterte offered cash rewards for each drug suspect killed during his administration’s antinarcotics campaign that claimed thousands of lives.

She alleged that the murders of suspected “narco-politicians,” including Tanauan City Mayor Antonio Halili—who was shot by a sniper in front of City Hall employees in 2018—were linked to Duterte’s offer of up to P1 million to policemen for killing drug suspects.

Garma, a trusted aide of Duterte, was appointed general manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) in 2019.

Her revelation was just one among many testimonies from other resource persons during the probe, which also suggested that Duterte allegedly ordered the killings of alleged Chinese drug lords who were stabbed and killed in a Davao prison in 2016.

In another hearing, Police Lt. Col. Santie Mendoza claimed that then Col. Edilberto Leonardo of the Davao Region office of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group allegedly instructed him to carry out a hit on PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga. (See related story on Page A5.)

Mendoza recounted that when he hesitated, Leonardo asserted that the operation had been ordered by Garma.

Accountability

On Monday, Barbers called on Garma to tell the quad committee whether or not Duterte ordered Barayuga’s killing.

House human rights panel head Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. likewise urged Garma to “reveal all she knows about EJKs and identify those who ordered the killings, who carried out the orders, who are all those involved.”

The committees on human rights, on dangerous drugs, on public order and safety, and on public accounts make up the quad committee.

Abante said that Garma’s “explosive” testimony during the panel’s eighth hearing last Friday linking to EJKs Duterte and his former special assistant and now Sen. Bong Go “could be just the tip of the iceberg.”

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Barbers, who chairs the dangerous drugs committee, said he was personally interested in finding out if the kill order for Barayuga came from Garma or from Duterte.

Go: Garma lying

Go on Monday expressed his willingness to initiate a Senate investigation into Garma’s allegations.

“If we need to have a parallel investigation here in the Senate, I’m very much willing to file a resolution for us to know the truth,” Go told reporters.

“There is no reward system,” he stressed. “The former president fully supported the police and other uniformed personnel by doubling their salaries and providing other assistance.”

Go insisted that Garma had lied about her testimony during the 14-hour hearing of the House body.

He said it was not true that Duterte had sanctioned the killings or ordered the killing of anyone during the brutal war on drugs.

The senator also turned the tables on the House members, pointing out that they were among those who gave Duterte standing ovations whenever he mentioned the supposed successes of the antinarcotics crackdown in his State of the Nation Address.

Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla vowed that there would be “no sacred cows” in the ongoing investigation into EJKs during Duterte’s war on drugs.

“Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but there are no sacred cows in this investigation,” he said in a press conference on Monday. —WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS AND FRANCES MANGOSING