Former president Rodrigo Duterte’s lawyer has petitioned the International Criminal Court to amend its protocol governing electronic submission of evidence, citing concerns over possible manipulation by the prosecution, whose evidence reportedly increased fivefold, less than three months before his trial. 

The defense’s submission dated 3 September 2026 came three days after ICC deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang submitted the lists of witnesses and evidence to be presented against Duterte for his scheduled trial on 30 November. Both lists were labeled confidential for containing “sensitive information.”

Defense lead counsel Peter Haynes took issue with the sharp increase in the prosecution’s evidence, initially pegged at over 5,000 before the confirmation of charges hearing in February to 25,000 as of 3 September, the document showed. The figure reflects a 400 percent increase. 

“[T]he defense is deeply concerned that the quality and quantity of the evidence in this case risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material,” the filing reads. “This would be detrimental for the parties and the chamber’s search for the truth, and reputationally damaging for the court.” 

Haynes argued that the majority of the evidence disclosed to them is “illegible”, and that audiovisual materials lack transcripts and/or translations, among other issues.

“Most recently, the prosecution has signalled its intention to disclose a further 200GB of material, which, owing to the size and volume of this dataset, eludes all traditional evidence uploading processes,” the British lawyer pointed out.

The defense emphasized the need to authenticate the prosecution's evidence through an expert, which could be achieved by amending the “E-Court Protocol.” 

He specifically pointed to the OTPLink created by the ICC prosecutors, allowing anyone to submit evidence or information about international crimes.

Based on the submission, over 400,000 electronic files have been received by prosecutors via the OTPLink in 2024 alone. The figure ballooned to more than 570,000 files in 2025.

“Whether or how the Office of the Prosecutor has triaged this huge volume of material to identify exculpatory material to meet its Article 54(1)(a) duty in the present case is not clear. There is also the obvious danger that nefarious actors will use the system to transmit falsified, manipulated, or forged evidence, which might also be circulated online; a risk identified by the Office of the Prosecutor itself,” Haynes argued. 

The defense cited the lack of an identifying tag on materials received through the OTPLink, alleging that some of them are tagged as “open source.” Haynes said this raised concerns about authenticity, since “individuals can submit to OTPLink anonymously if they wish.”

As a result, the defense called for amending the E-Court Protocol to add a new “expert verification” metadata field to determine whether an item needs to be accompanied by an expert report when submitted to the ICC as evidence. 

“In view of both the quantity and quality of the evidence disclosed to it to date, the defense is concerned that the evidentiary record in the present case risks being overwhelmed by material of dubious relevance, authenticity and reliability,” Haynes said.

“This is particularly pertinent in view of the information ecosystem surrounding this case, coming from a situation country with over 70 million smartphone users and the highest average screen time in the world, who are following these proceedings and engaging online in a volume never before experienced in a case before the ICC,” he concluded.

Duterte, 81, has been held in the ICC’s custody in The Hague, Netherlands, since his arrest on 11 March. He is facing three counts of crimes against humanity of murder for the killings of 78 individuals, including six children, allegedly suspected of drug dealing from 2013 to 2018, spanning his tenure as Davao mayor and as president.
It also covered the summary killings purportedly committed by the so-called Davao Death Squad, which was founded and headed by Duterte, as alleged by ICC prosecutors.