Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s legal counsel has voiced strong objections to the handling of his client’s medical records at the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying he was neither shown any written consent for their release nor allowed to take possession of the official report.
In a filing made public by the ICC on October 9, 2025, attorney Nicholas Kaufman said that the “Report on the Assessment by the Medical Officer of the Detention Centre” contained personal medical information that was shown to him only briefly before being returned to the detention facility.
Kaufman asserted that he was denied a copy of the report and that no written authorization from Duterte was presented to justify its release. He also claimed that Duterte confided to him about feeling “intimidated” by an unnamed individual whose identity was redacted from the official document.
The lawyer further challenged the legitimacy of what was described as an informed written consent supposedly provided by his client. “The validity of the so-called informed written ‘consent’ [REDACTED] claims to have received from Mr. Duterte is strenuously disputed,” Kaufman wrote.
He argued that the person involved was suffering from unspecified “cognitive impairment” and that their conduct, in cooperation with ICC officials, was “unprecedented and ethically questionable.”
Kaufman added that he had repeatedly informed the ICC Registry about Duterte’s condition—details of which were censored in the document—but said his communications were ignored and had instead led to “unilateral reprimand.”
