Less than two weeks before the scheduled hearings for the confirmation of charges against former president Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court, his lawyer is still trying to stop them from going forward.
Despite the Jan. 23 ruling of the Pre-Trial Chamber that the soon-to-be 81-year-old Duterte is fit to stand trial, his counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, insists that his client is “enfeebled.”
In an appeal filed Feb. 5 reiterating the indefinite adjournment of the hearings, Kaufman argued that the chamber committed substantial errors of fact and law when it declined to consider the medical report submitted by experts hired by Duterte. “The Medical Report detailed Mr Duterte’s lack of executive functioning, sustained planning capacity, and rapid decision-making—to say nothing of his enfeebled physical state—that would make it impossible for him to evade custody,” Kaufman said.
What does enfeebled mean?
The Britannica Dictionary defines it as “made very weak or tired.”
The problem with Kaufman’s claim that Duterte is “enfeebled” and suffering from “cognitive impairments in multiple domains” is that, it is contradicted by accounts from his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, in interviews with The Hague–based vlogger Alvin Dave Sarzate following her prison visits.
By her own telling, the older Duterte continues to make key decisions. He personally chose to keep Kaufman as counsel despite calls from supporters to replace him after repeated setbacks at the ICC.
On the birthday of Sen. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa last Jan. 21, Sara said her father asked her to relay a message to the absentee senator: “Magpakatigas ka na parang bato.”
Dela Rosa has not been seen for more than two months since Ombudsman Boying Remulla said in November that he had seen an ICC arrest warrant for the senator. Dela Rosa is named in ICC documents as a co-perpetrator in the crimes against humanity charge arising from Duterte’s war on drugs.
It is unlikely the ICC will be persuaded to accept the findings of Duterte-hired medical experts over those of the three-member multidisciplinary panel appointed by the chamber, composed of specialists in forensic psychiatry, neuropsychology, and geriatric and behavioral neurology.
Notably, the panel included a section titled “Concerning Reliability,” which Kaufman objected to. In it, the chamber noted that the panel unanimously agreed that “Mr Duterte is an unreliable historian concerning his health and mental functions” and that “Mr Duterte’s complaints of memory difficulty and apparent impaired performance on assessment are disproportionate to his observed abilities at interview.”
That is a polite way of saying Duterte’s words cannot be taken at face value—hardly news to Filipinos. He has long gotten away with lying, from the jet ski to the Spratlys, to the fake war on drugs, to his denial of multimillion-peso bank accounts allegedly funded by drug lords, among many others.
Now, like the boy who cried wolf, the lies appear to be catching up with him.
Kaufman’s latest move, filed Feb. 6, is a request to add items to the defense’s list of evidence.
The chamber has clarified that the purpose of the confirmation hearings is “to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to establish substantial grounds to believe that the person committed each of the crimes charged.” If any charges are confirmed, the case will move to a Trial Chamber for the next phase: the trial proper.
The hearings are scheduled for Feb. 23, 24, 26 and 27, with no hearing on Feb. 25 to allow Duterte to rest. Proceedings begin at 10 a.m. Netherlands time (5 p.m. in the Philippines). For a more detailed schedule, please click here:
The ICC has also formally designated human rights lawyers Joel Butuyan and Gilbert Andres of CenterLaw as legal representatives for the victims.
Disclosure: Butuyan is a trustee of VERA Files and CenterLaw has been helping us with our legal commitments.
Thumbnail photo produced with help from Google Gemini.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
