Palace spox: Did Duterte team admit ‘crime’ in freedom plea?
The lawyers of former President Rodrigo Duterte better keep their word and make sure their 80-year-old client “will not continue to commit crimes” if provisionally freed from detention by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
This was how a Malacañang official responded to news that Duterte’s defense team, led by counsel Nicholas Kaufman, had filed a request for his interim release on humanitarian grounds.
Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary and Palace press officer Claire Castro wondered if Duterte’s legal team had made an admission of his crimes in the way it phrased the request.
“In one way or another, the counsel admitted that the former president had committed such crimes,’’ Castro, a lawyer, noted at a press briefing on Friday.
Assurance
“Just a question: Because they will include that in their motion or petition that Duterte ‘will not continue to commit crimes,’ so is there an admission in that?” she added.
Duterte has been detained in a facility of the ICC in The Hague, the Netherlands, since March after his arrest in Manila.
He awaits his second hearing—for confirmation of charges—at the ICC where he faces charges for crimes against humanity over the thousands killed in the brutal war on drugs he waged, first as Davao City mayor and later as Philippine president, from 2011 to 2019.
In the 16-page request, Kaufman also assured the ICC that Duterte would not abscond or imperil the proceedings once temporarily freed.
“If that’s their (Duterte’s defense team) strategy, then we hope they can convince the ICC judges with that. They better not say later that their promises in their petitions are just jokes, like what happened with the jet ski promise,” she said.
2016 campaign ‘joke’
Castro was referring to Duterte’s promise during his 2016 presidential campaign that he would ride a jet ski to the West Philippine Sea (WPS) and plant a Philippine flag on its land features to assert the country’s sovereignty in defiance of China’s sweeping maritime claims.
Yet during his term, Duterte warmed up to China in exchange for promised investments and set aside the 2016 arbitral ruling that upheld Philippine sovereign rights in the WPS and junked Beijing’s so-called nine-dash-line claim over much of the South China Sea.
In 2021, Duterte explained that he made the “jet ski” promise as a mere show of “bravado” to court votes and as a “joke” that only the “stupid” believed.
“[L]et us leave it to the ICC to determine if they (Duterte’s lawyers) should be believed and if the request for interim release granted,” Castro said.
Malacañang will respect whatever the ICC decision may be on the matter, she added.
On Sara-Imee ‘deal’
Meanwhile, Castro shrugged off the remarks made by Vice President Sara Duterte in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Thursday where she challenged Sen. Imee Marcos, the President’s elder sister, to bring the elder Duterte back to the Philippines.
Castro said Mr. Marcos had no part in whatever deal Vice President Duterte and Senator Marcos may have regarding the ex-president.
“That’s between the Vice President and Sen. Imee Marcos. The President (Mr. Marcos) had no participation in their deal. The President is not privy to the contract or agreement between a user and a person willing to be used,” she said.
