Lawyer of Former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte Speaks on Appeal for ICC Prosecutor Disqualification
RODRIGO DUTERTE – The camp of the former President denied withdrawing its bid to disqualify International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan from the ICC case against him.
Former Pres. Duterte is detained under the custody of the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands for more than five (5) months now. The confirmation of charges against him is set on September 23.
Ahead of the confirmation of charges, the camp of former Pres. Duterte requested to the International Criminal Court for the disqualification of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan from the case. The lawyers of the former President cited the alleged “grievous conflict of interest”.
According to British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman, Duterte’s lead counsel, Khan allegedly “abused the criminal process to push forward an investigation in which he had an undeclared personal interest, or at the very least an undeclared personal obligation from which he had not sought to release himself”.
The request of the camp of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte to disqualify ICC prosecutor Karim Khan from the case came after they asked the foreign court to disqualify two (2) judges. However, the foreign court denied the bid to disqualify Judges María del Socorro Flores Liera and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou from the case.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan rejected the bid of Duterte’s camp to disqualify him from the case. According to the ICC Prosecutor, there is no ground for his disqualification. According to him, he was a member of the legal team that represented over 100 alleged victims of the Duterte drug war and they filed a submission to then Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and he “withdrew from the matter and ceased any involvement shortly thereafter”.
Recently, there were reports that the camp of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte withdrew its bid to disqualify ICC prosecutor Karim Khan from the case against him. However, based on a report on Inquirer, the Defense team of the former Philippine President clarified that they are not withdrawing their request.
According to Kaufman, they sought the disqualification of the ICC Prosecutor after it was allegedly made known of the “true extent of Khan’s conflict and bias”. Based on the report, the lead lawyer of the former President claimed that Khan allegedly has “hidden materials concerning his former representation from the court, including the fact that he had targeted the former president as the first among several worthy of prosecution back in 2018″.
Based on the report, the lead lawyer of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte clarified that the recent reports about their alleged withdrawal of the bid for disqualification against ICC prosecutor Karim Khan quoted their initial filing in April. According to him, at that time, they told the pretrial court that he found “no ostensible reason to doubt the prosecutor’s impartiality” of the ICC prosecutor as they relied on ‘‘the presumption of prosecutorial regularity’.
Khan said they continued to gather pieces of evidence from different sources. Recently, a few weeks ahead of the confirmation of charges, the ICC Registry revealed that they got more than 300 applications from alleged Duterte drug war victims who want to participate in the case.