NUPL lawyer calls SolGen ‘lazy’ for asking for ICC investigation records on EJKs
One of the lawyers representing drug war victims has called Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra “lazy” for asking the International Criminal Court (ICC) to simply turn over their probe records to the Philippine government so it could start its prosecution for the thousands of extrajudicial killings (EJK) under the Duterte administration.
Kristina Conti of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) said the government has very little to show in terms of criminal investigations and prosecution.
The last nine years have passed without a single complaint filed against former President Rodrigo Duterte or any of his police chiefs since he launched an antinarcotics campaign against drug users and traders in 2016.
“It is late and lazy work to ask for someone else’s investigation records when the duty was yours in the first place,” Conti said in response to a statement made by Guevarra in an interview with state-run broadcaster PTV on Feb. 18.
In that interview, the Solicitor General said that the Hague-based tribunal should not expect assistance from the Philippine government because it is already conducting its investigation. Instead, Guevarra added, the ICC should just hand over its documents related to the drug war, and “not the other way around.”
DOJ’s failure
Conti, also an ICC-recognized counsel, said: “This is precisely why victims entrusted the [ICC] to investigate incidents amounting to crimes against humanity. Notwithstanding its limited jurisdiction and imperfection, the court has shown us seriousness, thoroughness, and sensitivity in its information gathering and processing.”
Conti pointed out that Guevarra, who also served as Duterte’s justice secretary, failed to carry out a comprehensive inquiry and obtain sufficient evidence regarding the killings that international monitoring groups put at more than 20,000.
“This, despite the Justice department’s massive authority to assemble public records from different agencies-police reports, SOCO (scene of the crime operatives) investigations reports, autopsy and medico-legal reports, criminal complaints—and to consider these as evidence,” she said in a statement on Thursday.
What came out of the lone Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into the bloody deaths was that 32 of the 52 cases had insufficient evidence due to missing police records, eventually prompting the government prosecutors to close them.
“If the Philippine government is unable to secure evidence, then all the more should it allow the ICC to continue and complete its investigation with due respect to the integrity, independence, and objectivity of separate institutions,” Conti said.
She wondered why the DOJ remained “remiss” in investigating the drug-related killings even though the Philippine National Police (PNP), based on its count, placed the number of deaths under “Oplan Tokhang” at around 7,000.
