📷Rodrigo Roa Duterte appearing for the first time before the ICC judges on 14 March 2025 ©ICC-CPI
Detained ex-president Rodrigo Duterte’s attempt to squash the criminal charges lodged against him ended up in flames before the Pre-trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) late on Mar. 14, 2024, with Presiding Judge Iulia Antoanella Motoc of Romania telling counsel and ex-executive secretary Salvador Medialdea that Duterte’s arrest followed established ICC procedures and rejected his theory that both the ICC and the Marcos Jr. administration “connived” to undertake his client’s “extraordinary rendition.”
Medialdea tagged Duterte’s arrest as “pure, simple kidnapping” hatched by Marcos Jr. and the ICC. To buttress his weird theory, Medialdea told the chamber that “two troubled entities struck an unlikely alliance—an incumbent President who wishes to neutralize and choke the legacy of my client, and his daughter, on the other hand, a troubled legal institution subject to the legitimization and desperate for a legal show.”
The Duterte camp earlier said they would ask for the deferment of the hearing but the chamber proceeded to hold it, just as it rejected the evidence-free allegation of a conspiracy between the court and the Philippine government to abduct Duterte.
With the two manifestations raised by Medialdea rejected outright, Motoc and Judges Socorro Flores Liera of Mexico and Reine Alapini-Gansou of Benin set another hearing for the confirmation of the charges.
The initial hearing conducted formally presented murder charges against Duterte for 43 drug-related killings during his time as Davao City mayor and as Philippine president.
Duterte was apprised of the charges, with Motoc telling him about his culpability as “an indirect co-perpetrator” in the murders of 19 alleged “drug pushers or thieves” by the Davao Death Squad (DDS) between 2011 and 2016 and 24 more between 2016 and 2019.
Motoc said Pre-trial Chamber I found “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Duterte is criminally responsible” for the systematic targeting and killing of individuals as part of his anti-drug campaigns.
“You have just heard the reading of the charges, which are in accordance with the content of the arrest warrant you received,” Motoc told Duterte. “This means that you have been informed of the crimes of which you are accused.”
It appears that the formal trial of Duterte may cover thousands of other murders in Davao City and across the nation after he took power in 2016 and immediately launched his “tokhang” campaign as part of his war on drug pushers and petty criminals.
The chamber rejected Medialdea’s claims that Duterte had been improperly transferred to The Hague and that he was physically unable to understand the proceedings, telling the three judges that Duterte is hard of hearing, walks with a cane, and needs assistance to understand the gravity of the charges.
Motoc could not believe Medialdea’s narrative, reiterating that the chamber noted that doctors and other medical professionals had found Duterte “fully mentally aware and fit” despite his age. Moreover, by insisting that Duterte was kidnapped through a conspiracy hatched by the ICC and the Philippine government, Medialdea was assailing the fairness of the proceedings. Motoc rejected this, noting that the ICC had jurisdiction over Duterte as a respondent in the crimes against humanity.
In what amounts to a prolonged vacation, the chamber scheduled the confirmation of charges hearing for Duterte on Sept. 23, 2025, allowing him and his legal team more than six months to prepare his defense and controvert the evidence already accumulated by the prosecution from the murders attributed to Duterte’s death squads from the 1990s to the assassination of broadcaster Jun Pala in 2003 and the more than 30,000 victims of his war on drugs. “At the confirmation of charges hearing you can contest the charges, challenge the evidence provided by the prosecutor and present evidence,” Motoc told Duterte.
Duterte’s legal team has their work cut out for them. Official Philippine data show that the war against illegal drugs launched by Duterte claimed at least 6,000 lives. The United Nations (UN) placed the figure at 7,000 while human rights watchdogs and the ICC prosecutor estimated the death toll to be between 12,000 and 30,000 from 2016 to 2019.
During his several stints as Davao City mayor, Duterte was tagged as the mastermind of 3,000 killings, including many street waifs and children in conflict with the law (CICL).
Crucial to the case against Duterte is his admission that he had kept a gang of hitmen in Davao and elsewhere, ordered policemen to shoot suspects mercilessly and make them look like they fought back, and that he had set up reward money for his hitmen.
Six months are an eternity for Duterte, who is expected to plead for interim release pending trial but such liberty may not be available to him, with the relatives of his victims arguing he is not only a flight risk but is also obsessed with violence, and all those who took the cudgels for the victims of the drug war may find themselves in his crosshairs once he is released to continue his mayhem.
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III recently urged the Dutertes, led by Rodrigo and his children Sara, Paulo, and Sebastian to undergo psychiatric assessment for their obsession with violence. Incidentally, one such psychiatric unit exists at the Scheveningen prison in The Hague. (DIEGO MORRA)
