Time gap crucial for Du30 lawyers to ready defense
Legal experts said on Sunday the time gap between Rodrigo Duterte’s initial appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) last Friday and the confirmation of charges in September will be crucial for the former president’s lawyers to prepare their defense.
At the same time, they said, they could use this perfect “opportunity” to raise any challenges before The Hague-based tribunal.
“Usually, what will happen is that they will file their challenge and the [ICC] prosecutor is going to … submit its counterarguments and then the ICC, the Pre-Trial Chamber, is going to rule,” lawyer Joel Butuyan told the Inquirer in a phone interview.
Butuyan, an ICC-accredited lawyer, also emphasized that the most critical during this period is the disclosure of evidence by the prosecution that will allow Duterte’s camp to prepare for trial.
“At the ICC, the prosecutor is obliged to give him the evidence they gathered that favors him or can help in his defense,” Butuyan said in another interview on Super Radyo dzBB. He noted that this is a privilege not observed in Philippine court proceedings.
The ICC has set on Sept. 23 the hearing on the confirmation of charges against Duterte, who stands accused of crimes against humanity related to his drug war.
Former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, one of the cocounsels for the victims of the drug war’s extrajudicial killings (EJKs), said the Sept. 23 hearing would focus on the defense’s objection to the charges “rather than the process of the arrest.”
This was in response to Harry Roque’s disclosure that they would question the manner of Duterte’s arrest and the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Philippines based on its withdrawal from the Rome Statute effective March 2019.
Roque, also an accredited lawyer in the ICC, is part of Duterte’s defense team alongside former Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea.
Lead counsel
On Saturday (Amsterdam time), Vice President Sara Duterte announced that her father’s lead counsel is British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman.
Based on his LinkedIn profile, Kaufman’s legal services span from celebrities to politicians and “other high-profile individuals around the world.”
Kaufman served as a trial lawyer of the “International Court for the former Yugoslavia.” He also worked as a defense counsel for the ICC.
He earned his law degree at the University of Cambridge.
‘Shallow issue’
Butuyan and Colmenares said questioning the ICC’s jurisdiction and the former leader’s arrest will not help Duterte’s legal team.
Butuyan said the ICC already denied a similar challenge by the Philippine government in 2023.
“Their argument was that our withdrawal [from the Rome Statute] in 2018 would take a year to be effective … [and] that the formal investigation should have been done within that one-year extension. That’s a very shallow issue,” Butuyan said.
He added that the Pre-Trial Chamber could reiterate the ruling should Duterte’s camp raise the issue.
Butuyan also said the ICC had issued a valid arrest warrant and the arresting officer had read Duterte his Miranda Rights.
The Inquirer reached out to Medialdea and Roque through online messages but they have yet to respond as of press time.
