ICC drops one alleged killing from Duterte case

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has ordered prosecutors to remove one alleged killing from the charges against former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, ruling that it fell outside the period covered by the confirmed allegations.

In its 9 October decision, Trial Chamber III said Incident 57 could not be included in Count 2, which covers the alleged murders of “high-value targets” across the Philippines between July 2016 and July 2017.

“The Prosecution cannot now be permitted to broaden the temporal scope of the confirmed charges beyond the defined period the Prosecution itself established,” the chamber said.

The chamber ordered prosecutors to remove Incident 57 from their list of witnesses, list of evidence and trial brief by 16 October. Seven other incidents added by prosecutors were allowed to remain because they fell within the factual, geographic and temporal scope of the charges.

The ruling centered on the limits of the charges confirmed by the ICC’s pretrial chamber. While prosecutors may add incidents that fit within those limits, the trial chamber said the period specified in Count 2 must be respected.

It said applying those limits was necessary to protect Duterte’s right to understand the allegations against him and prepare his defense.

“Doing so safeguards the right of the Accused to be able to understand with sufficient clarity the facts and circumstances underlying the charges and to meaningfully prepare his defence,” the chamber said.

The defense had argued that the charges were a “moving target” because prosecutors treated the incidents initially listed as illustrative rather than exhaustive, leaving uncertainty over which alleged acts they would need to prove at trial.

However, the chamber rejected the defense’s separate request to require prosecutors to refile the document containing the charges with a complete list of incidents. It said the trial chamber could not reconsider charges already confirmed by the pretrial chamber.

Defense challenges evidence review

In a separate filing, Duterte’s lawyers sought permission to reply to prosecutors’ arguments over a dataset of about 32,000 records, arguing that prosecutors must assess the material for potentially exculpatory evidence.

“The Defence position is that the Prosecution is not entitled to merely select the ‘most relevant’ incriminating items and decline to determine the materiality, relevance, or exonerating nature of the remainder,” the filing said.

The defense questioned the prosecution’s claim that it had conducted a “systematic and manual review” of the records, citing a fatal stabbing allegedly linked to a gambling dispute in which shabu was wagered.

It said prosecutors included the incident in their count of drug-related killings because the suspect was described as a drug pusher and illegal drugs were recorded as a motive.

“There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such incidents in the dataset,” the defense claimed.

“The relevance of the [REDACTED] dataset depends on what it contains,” the filing said.

The defense also disputed how prosecutors proposed making the records available for review. It said prosecutors initially offered a separate analytical platform in July, which the defense accepted, but later proposed uploading the records to the DefenceJEM platform with a spreadsheet.

“This is a burden that no Defence team could or should ever accept to absorb,” the filing said.

The defense said it waited from 24 July to 14 August for a response while other case deadlines continued to run. It asked to file a reply of up to 10 pages within three days of approval.

Inday thanks father’s supporters

Meanwhile, Vice President Sara Duterte, thanked Filipinos in the Netherlands and neighboring countries for supporting the Free Duterte Now Movement in The Hague, saying their support and prayers for her father’s return to the Philippines gave the family strength.

In a social media post, the younger Duterte expressed gratitude to Filipinos who joined the movement’s launch in recent months.

“Taos-puso akong nagpapasalamat sa lahat ng mga Pilipino mula sa Netherlands at kalapit nitong mga bansa na nakiisa sa inilunsad na Free Duterte Now Movement sa The Hague noong mga nakaraang buwan,” the post read.

Rodrigo Duterte, 81, faces three counts of crimes against humanity: alleged murders in Davao City during his mayoral tenure from 2013 to around June 2016; alleged murders of at least 14 “high-value targets” nationwide from around July 2016 to July 2017; and alleged murders and attempted murders during barangay clearance operations nationwide from around July 2016 to September 2018. He denies the charges.