The prosecution in the crimes against humanity case of former president Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court has identified eight individuals as alleged co-perpetrators in the implementation of his bloody war on drugs.
Duterte’s co-perpetrators named in the prosecution’s trial brief are Sens. Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa and Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, former National Police chiefs Oscar Albayalde and Camilo Cascolan, former National Bureau of Investigation director Dante Gierran, former Drug Enforcement Agency chief Isidro Lapeña, former Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II and former Manila Police District director Vicente Danao.
Other members of the Philippine National Police and high-ranking government officials were also included in the list but remained unnamed.
According to the prosecution, Duterte and his co-perpetrators shared a “common plan” or agreement to “neutralize” persons suspected of drug-involvement and other crimes through violent acts, including murder.
The prosecution’s trial brief outlined the alleged role of each individual in carrying out the “common plan” throughout the period covered by the charges, from Nov. 11, 2011 to March 16, 2019.
Their roles: Dela Rosa, Go, Albayalde
Dela Rosa was chief of the Davao City Police Office before becoming PNP chief in 2016.
The trial brief underscored that on his first day in office as PNP chief Dela Rosa launched the national anti-illegal drug campaign titled “Project: Double Barrel.” He issued statements encouraging killings, promoted or protected police officers, and publicly urged law enforcers to invoke self-defense to make the killings appear legitimate.
As Duterte’s special assistant, Go was known as the “gateway” to the former president. He allegedly relayed names of targets and reported on the success of killings and financial rewards between Duterte and the Davao Death Squad handlers.
Albayalde was regional director of the National Capital Region before he became PNP chief (April 2018-October 2019). The brief noted that during Albayalde’s tenure, NCRPO was a “hot spot” for killings and some of the deadliest weeks in the record of anti-drug campaigns.
Cascolan, Danao, Gierran
Cascolan was a classmate of Dela Rosa and Albayalde in the Philippine Military Academy. As PNP director of operations (2016-2018), he was responsible for the oversight and tracking of PNP operations, including the anti-illegal drugs campaign. He allegedly met with other co-perpetrators in 2020 to discuss expanding the common plan and played a key role in drafting Project Double Barrel. He was PNP chief for two months before he retired in November 2020. He passed away on Nov. 24, 2023.
Danao’s friendship with Duterte goes a long way back in the 1990s. As Davao City Police Office director, he was said to have ordered an accelerated Tokhang campaign and to kill suspected drug offenders while heading the Davao City police from 2013 to 2016.
A law school fraternity brother of Duterte, Gierran was allegedly involved in the Duterte Death Squad killings while working for the NBI in Davao. As National Bureau of Investigation director under the Duterte presidency, Gierran was accused of failing to investigate the drug war-related crimes until the Department of Justice ordered an investigation in 2017.
Lapeña and Aguirre
Lapeña’s friendship with Duterte goes back to his days as a member of the Davao City police. He was appointed by Duterte as head of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in 2016 and was implicated by a prosecution witness for ordering DDS-linked police officers “to kill individuals cleared by Duterte.”
Aguirre, also a law school fraternity brother of Duterte like Gierran, was accused of ensuring impunity for the perpetrators by “resisting calls for independent investigations into killings” and dismissing the killings as politically motivated or “blown out of proportion.”
The brief said he participated in covering up the killings. He allegedly instructed DDS members “to move the bodies of victims buried in Laud Quarry so that they would not be discovered and by publicly claiming that bones exhumed from the quarry were those of “animals” or people executed during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.
The trial brief was filed less than two months before the start of trial of the former president on Nov. 30. It said that the summarized evidence, in addition to those that will be presented during the trial, “will prove beyond reasonable doubt that Duterte is criminally responsible for Counts 1 to 3, which include the killings when he was Davao City mayor, the killing of high-value targets when he was president, and killings in barangay-level operations known as Oplan Tokhang.
