Bersamin: Duterte’s return to PH ‘beyond our purview’
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin declined to respond to an alleged request of detained former President Rodrigo Duterte to be allowed to return to the Philippines from The Hague where he is facing charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity over his drug war.
“I am not too sure how to respond to that because that’s outside of our purview,” Bersamin said after defending the proposed budgets for the Office of the President and the Presidential Management Staff before the Senate committee on finance on Wednesday (see related story above).
“[And] who is Kaufman?” he asked reporters when told that Duterte’s lawyer Nicholas Kaufman had supposedly asked the Marcos administration to allow the former president’s return to the Philippines.
“Whatever opinions supposed lawyers have about their respective clients, we leave it to them. We should not be made to react because we do not care about their comments,” said Bersamin, a former chief justice who spent 16 years of his legal career in the judiciary, including 10 years in the Supreme Court.
He did not confirm nor deny whether Malacañang had indeed received a request from Duterte or his lawyers about his possible repatriation or whether the ICC had already decided to release the former president.
Duterte, the first Asian leader to be charged by the ICC, was scheduled to appear at a pretrial hearing on Sept. 23 in which he was expected to confirm that he understood the charges against him.
Not fit
But Kaufman sought a postponement of the hearing, arguing that the 80-year-old Duterte was not fit to face trial and should be temporarily released. Two of the three pretrial judges granted a limited delay to assess whether he can participate in the proceedings.
Duterte faces charges of crimes against humanity for a deadly antidrug crackdown that the Philippine National Police confirmed to have killed at least 6,000. Rights groups claim, however, that the death toll reached around 30,000. The charges at the ICC were filed
by the families of the victims.
On Sept. 8, Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said that retired police colonel Royina Garma may become a witness for the drug war victims in the ICC case.
“I think she has agreed to be a witness, according to [former] Sen. [Antonio] Trillanes. I’ve been working with Sen. Trillanes because we have no real official relationship with the ICC, except for the fact that we protect the witnesses who are here,” Remulla said.
Trillanes, for his part, confirmed that Garma agreed to testify against Duterte should the case proceed to trial. The former police official left for Malaysia last Sunday to meet with ICC lawyers.
