Many of those following the riveting drama involving the arrest and transfer to The Hague of former President Rodrigo Duterte by local authorities and the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on the basis of a warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) can’t see how even the most astute of defense lawyers would be able to defend the former president from charges of crimes against humanity, particularly his allowing tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs between 2011 and 2019.

The investigation of allegations on the anti-drugs war had been conducted by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan since way before Duterte ascended to the Philippine presidency, that is, when he was still Davao City mayor.

The official tally of the drug war at the end of the Duterte presidential term was 6,250 deaths.

However, in a June 2024 House Committee on Human Rights hearing on extrajudicial killings under Duterte’s drug war, human rights lawyer Chel Diokno pointed to a Supreme Court (SC) en banc resolution which included an Office of the President (OP) report listing 20,322 drug-war related deaths between 1 July 2016 and 27 November 2017 as among the OP’s accomplishments in 2017.

The OP report was cited in a SC resolution dated 3 April 2018 which was released when the legitimacy of Duterte’s drug war was being questioned before the High Court.

What complicates matters for Duterte and his defense counsel is that his unrestrained loquaciousness has only resulted in providing the prosecution with ample ammunition.

For instance, a chronicling of his pronouncements on deaths related to his drug war by Amnesty International showed him saying on 16 March 2016 during his campaign for the presidency that if and when he became president, he’d “order the police and the military to find these people (involved in drugs) and kill them.”

On the same occasion, he said he would eradicate drugs by killing so many in the illegal drugs trade that “it will cause a boom for the funeral business” in the Philippines.

Hours after he was sworn in as president on 30 June 2016, he went to a Manila slum area and urged its residents to kill their drug-addled neighbors. “If you know any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,“ he told the residents.

He was also quoted as saying, “This campaign of shoot-to-kill will remain until the last day of my term. I don’t care about human rights, believe me.”

On 6 August 2016, as the death toll of his drug war neared 1,000, an unapologetic Duterte vowed no let-up, saying, “I’d be happy to slaughter more.”

In September 2016, unlike a previous order he gave to police that only those who resisted arrest should be killed, he said crime suspects should be killed whether or not they fought back.

Speaking in Tagalog, he said, “If they pull out a gun, kill them. If they don’t, kill them anyway, sonofabitch, so it’ll be over, lest you lose a gun. I’ll take care of you.”

He also told people to emulate him, saying, “I used to do it (kill people) personally just to show that if I can do it, so can you.”

On 28 November 2016, then president Duterte bristled at ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s warning that persons inciting “mass violence” were “potentially liable for prosecution” at the ICC.

Angered, Duterte said, “You want to scare me by threatening to have me thrown in prison? International Criminal Court? Bullshit!”

He continued, “I don’t give a damn about being prosecuted in the ICC. Go ahead. It would be my pleasure to go to prison for my country.”

On 20 September 2017, Duterte shrugged off potential prosecution. Addressing policemen, he said, “It’s on me, not on you. I will answer for it and if anyone should go to prison, I will be the one.”

Again, in January 2018, at a turnover of SUV patrol cars to Davao City police, he told the policemen all they had to do was perform their duties even if it meant killing crime suspects during operations and they would have his full backing: “That’s our deal. When I said you go and destroy the drug industry, by destroying I mean destroying, including human life. I will take care of you.”

Indeed, who said there’s virtue in talking too much? So here we are, waiting, at this juncture, to see what strategy the counsel for Duterte’s defense led by British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufmann could craft to pluck their garrulous, self-incriminating client out of the fix he’s in.