Did government break the law in turning over Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court?
No. Government is in fact authorized to surrender heinous crime suspects to international investigators and jurors, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio asserts.
That law is RA 9851, or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity.
The 2009 law nullifies Duterte loyalists’ questions against his arrest through an ICC warrant.
Duterte and Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa are petitioning the SC to overturn the arrest. They claim that government went overboard in cooperating with Interpol.
But Dela Rosa himself and Oscar Albayade could soon be apprehended also on ICC order.
This is because the two former PNP chiefs of president Duterte are named in his charge sheet, says ICC assistant to counsel Kristina Conti.
RA 9851 states in Chapter VII, Jurisdiction, Section 17:
“In the interest of justice, the relevant Philippine authorities may dispense with the investigation or prosecution of a crime punishable under this Act if another court or international tribunal is already conducting the investigation or undertaking the prosecution of such crime.
“Instead, the authorities may surrender or extradite suspected or accused persons in the Philippines to the appropriate international court, if any, or to another State pursuant to the applicable extradition laws and treaties.”
This is the law applicable today, not Article 59 of the Rome Statute, Carpio says.
Invoking ICC’s Article 59, Duterte loyalists paint his arrest as illegal.
Article 59 obligates an ICC member-state to immediately enforce the arrest in accordance with its laws. The arrestee should be brought promptly to the State’s judicial authority to determine if:
(a) The warrant applies to that person,
(b) The person was arrested in accordance with proper process and
(c) The person’s rights were respected.
The arrestee may even petition the State’s judiciary for release, pending voluntary surrender.
PNP officers, including a doctor, delivered Duterte to ICC headquarters in the Netherlands before midnight Wednesday. He was accompanied in the chartered flight by a personal assistant, a nurse and his ex-executive secretary Salvador Medialdea.
ICC is probing Duterte for crimes against humanity, including the slaying of 36,000 drug suspects. The murders occurred between Nov. 1, 2011 when he was Davao City mayor and the Philippines joined ICC, till March 16, 2019 when as president he withdrew the Philippines from ICC.
Duterte, Dela Rosa and lawyers claim that he wasn’t given the opportunity under ICC rules to question the arrest warrant before a Philippine court and seek temporary relief.
But Article 59 does not apply anymore, Carpio says: “Duterte terminated in 2019 Philippine membership in the ICC. The Philippines is no longer bound today to follow Article 59. Duterte has only himself to blame if he cannot now invoke the Rome Statute.”
The SC denied Wednesday morning Duterte and Dela Rosa’s plea to restrain the PNP from arresting him.
Bereaved families of the slain victims and witnesses have linked Dela Rosa and Albayalde to the crimes against humanity. Dela Rosa was mayor Duterte’s Davao City police chief, June 30, 2013 to June 30, 2016. He was then promoted to PNP director general up to retirement on April 19, 2018.
Albayalde took over from Dela Rosa. He was formerly PNP Pampanga provincial head.
Being repeatedly identified in ICC preliminary investigations, “they could be next” for ICC arrest warrants, Conti said in broadcast interviews.
Former “Davao Death Squad” henchmen Arturo Lascañas and Edgar Matobato have also linked Duterte’s daughter VP Sara Duterte to killings. She supposedly directed them as Davao City mayor for three years till June 30, 2013.
Although suspecting to be slated for arrest, VP Sara flew to The Hague Wednesday to hire defense lawyers for Duterte.
The 15-page ICC arrest order states that the murders followed a pattern, including locations, modus operandi, methods of killing and profiles of victims and perpetrators.
Duterte supposedly formed the Lambada Boys, later renamed Davao Death Squad, consisting of police officers and non-police hitmen. Also:
“As founder of the DDS and later head of the Philippines, Duterte, jointly with high-ranking government officials and members of the police force and through other persons, agreed to ‘neutralize’ individuals they identified as criminals or with criminal propensities, including but not limited to drug offenders.
“The word ‘neutralize’ was used and understood by those involved in the operations to mean to ‘kill’. This agreement had the aim of ‘addressing the growing criminality’ by ‘killing criminals in a very covert and secret manner’ without ‘sticking to the basic law enforcement or investigation,’ which had allegedly proven ineffective in eliminating or reducing crimes.”
Read full text in ICC website: https://www.icc-cpi.int/court-record/icc-01/21-83.
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