The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction in the Philippines relative to the Duterte administration's campaign against illegal drugs, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra has maintained.
Guevarra said the Office of the Solicitor General, through the Philippine Embassy at The Hague, has already submitted, as of 8 September, its objection to the request of the ICC prosecutors to resume the investigation regarding the "situation" in the country.
In its submission to the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC, the Philippine government asked the body to deny the request of ICC prosecutors to probe former president Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs" between 1 July 2016 and 16 March 2019.
The ICC prosecutors also sought to investigate a similar campaign from 1 November 2011 and 30 June 2016 in the Davao region during the said period when Duterte was mayor of Davao City.
The Philippines raised the following points: 1) That the ICC has no jurisdiction over the situation in the Philippines; 2) the alleged murder incidents do not constitute "crimes against humanity," 3) and that the said occurrences were not in furtherance of a state or organizational policy to commit such attacks.
Further, the government posited that the ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines as a country with a fully functioning justice system. The country included updates on the cases that had been filed on some anti-drug operations under questioned circumstances, it added.
