Coming out of the woodwork, fumbling putschist Antonio Trillanes IV bragged to all those who would care to listen that he had sent copies of the transcripts of the Senate and House hearings on President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He added that the documents would be used as evidence to bolster the crimes against humanity charges against the ex-president.
In his weird sense of mischief, the former president on interrogation by the Akbayan Partylist Senator Risa Hontiveros during the recent Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee hearing admitted to maintaining a death squad but which, the way he described it, appeared to be hyperbole for the commitment he demanded from the Davao City police chiefs.
“All of these would be used for the trial later,” Trillanes claimed.
In a sinister union, Trillanes and left-wing partylist legislators are prodding the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Duterte and his officials over the conduct of the war on drugs.
Unfortunately, however, the chief ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, who is handling the complaints, is facing a bigger controversy which is the allegation of sexual misconduct against a subordinate.
In between investigating Duterte, Khan was alleged to have been probing a more private matter.
Republican US Senator Lindsey Graham has called on the ICC to immediately and fully disclose the records pertaining to the Khan controversy.
Harassment allegations began percolating last May, a few days before Khan canceled his scheduled trip to meet with Israeli officials. Instead, he abruptly announced he had applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
Graham wrote to Päivi Kaukoranta, president of the Assembly of States Parties of ICC, saying, “In the weeks before Prosecutor Khan applied for warrants, I worked with a bipartisan group of United States senators to urge Prosecutor Khan to adhere to the Rome Statute in conducting his investigation.”
The issue raised by Graham was the same one legal experts had raised against the ICC probe into Duterte’s war on drugs.
Graham said a US bipartisan group had “urged Prosecutor Khan to respect the principle of complementarity and to engage in good faith with Israeli officials before making any decision as to how to move forward against the State of Israel.”
Due to the timing of the arrest orders against the Israeli officials and the brewing controversy over the charges of impropriety, Graham wrote: “I call for the release of the records about these allegations, including any decision not to open an investigation, and for an update on where this matter stands. Until such transparency is satisfactorily achieved, another cloud — a moral one — hangs over Prosecutor Khan’s abrupt decision to abandon engagement with Israel and seek arrest warrants.”
On 20 May, Khan requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes related to Gaza.
For the warrants to be issued, the request must be approved by a panel of three ICC judges.
Until now, the ICC has not issued the arrest orders indicating the complex process that it undergoes, which makes the process now more tricky amid the controversy facing one of its key officials.
Defenders of Khan allege the accusations may have been made as part of an Israeli intelligence smear campaign.
Yet many see the high-profile charges against the Israeli leaders, and the one being built up against Duterte, brought after the sexual misconduct probe began were meant to distract from the complaint.
Two co-workers in whom Khan’s alleged victim confided at ICC headquarters in The Hague reported the alleged misconduct in early May to the court’s independent watchdog, which said it interviewed the woman and ended its inquiry after five days when she opted not to file a formal complaint. Khan himself was never questioned.
Trillanes may have to look for another venue for his black operations as the ICC’s reputation has sunk to its lowest depth with the Khan scandal.
Duterte’s metaphorical pledge to immediately kill drug offenders is ingrained in the minds of Filipinos and the misconduct allegations against Kahn merely reinforce the contrast between the accuser and the accused.
It strengthens Duterte’s and his legal supporters’ argument that the complaints against him are better prosecuted in local courts, where the judges are more credible than those of the ICC.