This time, Du30 lawyers want 2 doctors off examining panel
First, they wanted to get rid of the judges, then the chief prosecutor.
This time, the defense lawyers of former President Rodrigo Duterte want two doctors removed from the three-member medical panel tasked by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to determine whether the 80-year-old is still fit for trial.
They have asked the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) I of the ICC to disqualify two court-appointed neuropsychologists, whose names have been withheld.
The PTC I on Sept. 24 named the final team of neurologists and psychiatrists who will examine Duterte to see if he’s still capable of exercising his rights to a fair trial while in detention on charges of crimes against humanity over the thousands killed in his so-called war on drugs.
The following day, Duterte’s lawyers requested that one of the specialists, a female neuropsychologist, be removed from the panel, citing her “active and ongoing suspension” from her medical practice.
‘Suspended’
According to the redacted filing made public only on Tuesday, the defense on Sept. 25 said the supposed suspension was imposed by an undisclosed “professional regulatory body,” of which the expert was a member of.
Even “more troubling,” it noted, was that the doctor’s suspension had already been upheld four times by the same body. It also called out the doctor for not informing the ICC Registry, the division of the tribunal that handles the accredited list of medical experts, of her suspension when the tribunal contacted her about her possible role in the case.
“An expert suspended by a domestic regulatory board, and who displays such open contempt for judicial proceedings, should not be allowed to [redacted] the Registry’s List of Experts and cannot be permitted to provide expertise at the ICC,” the Duterte defense team said in the 13-page filing.
The team also blamed the PTC I, the prosecution, the Registry and the Office of the Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV), for supposedly not doing its own review—or even a “basic Google search”—on the experts who were considered for the case.
“This goes beyond passive omission and puts into question the standards adopted by the Registry to maintain an ongoing review of its experts,” it said.
The OPCV, headed by Paolina Massidda, dismissed the criticism as “unfounded,” saying it was not its job to scrutinize the list of accredited experts.
Screenshots
In another filing by the defense on Oct. 20, which was also only recently made public, the appointment of the female neuropsychologist, who was the subject of the Sept. 25 disqualification bid, was revoked. She was replaced by an unnamed male expert.
But the Duterte lawyers, led by Nicholas Kaufman, “urgently” sought the disqualification of the doctor replacing the ousted female neuropsychologist, citing the former’s “sickeningly offensive” social media posts last year.
The defense submitted screenshots of the purported tweets to “demonstrate this practitioner’s manifest lack of professionalism, respectability and suitability to provide expertise at the (ICC).” The posts were blackened in the public document.
“The defense considers the language in the cited posts to be so offensive, inappropriate, disrespectful, and unprofessional that it seems self-evident that the Registry cannot be aware of it,” they said.
They asked the court to consider whether the “offensive” speech of the doctor is still in line with what it expects from court-appointed medical experts, adding:
“The court must toe the line between protected personal activity and shielding its currently beleaguered reputation by allowing itself to be associated with—and possibly to be seen as endorsing—such bias and vulgarity.”
“The defense submits that the impugned tweets are so fundamentally inconsistent with the values of this court-integrity, professionalism, and impartiality—that the author and recycler thereof cannot, and should not, be added to the list of experts as proposed,” they said.
Duterte’s lawyers also questioned the credentials of the neuropsychologist, noting that the doctor was “qualified only six years ago and has no record whatsoever of any academic publication” except for a 2018 doctoral thesis and another 2015 publication cited by the court.
The prosecution, for its part, agreed to the request of the defense to recall the appointment of the two medical specialists from the panel, and recommended a new neuropsychologist to assume the vacancy. It submitted its responses to the disqualification requests in two separate filings released only on Nov. 10.
It also told the PTC again to reject the defense’s continued request for interim release for Duterte and for the entire pre-trial proceedings to be suspended while the chamber decides on his fitness to participate in the case.
The new bid for disqualification from the Duterte camp comes after the ICC plenary of judges, with President Tomoko Akane at the helm, unanimously denied its appeal to disqualify PTC I Judges Reine Alapini-Gansou and María del Socorro Flores Liera for alleged bias. The plenary is composed of all 18 judges of the tribunal based in The Hague.
The defense, however, was successful in ousting ICC prosecutor Karim Khan from the Duterte case for his involvement as a private lawyer for the victims when his predecessor, former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, was still taking over the probe.
Duterte is facing three counts of murder in connection with the more than 49 violent killing incidents under a policy he implemented that allegedly gave merit to police officers and hired gunmen who executed the operations.
