The legal team of former President Rodrigo Duterte has insisted on its motion to disqualify International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan, dismissing earlier reports that it had withdrawn the request.
Nicolas Kaufman, Duterte’s chief legal counsel, confirmed that the motion was filed on August 6 after the defense “became aware of the true extent of Khan’s conflict and bias.” He accused Khan of concealing details of his prior involvement in cases tied to the Philippines, saying that the prosecutor “had 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.”
Kaufman explained that this information only reached Duterte’s camp in June, two months after it initially informed the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber that it would not pursue disqualification. At that time, he said, the defense assumed there was “no ostensible reason to doubt the prosecutor’s impartiality or his assertions that he is not conflicted.”
The issue stems from Khan’s earlier role as one of the pro bono lawyers who reviewed and presented evidence to former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who in 2018 began a preliminary probe into alleged crimes tied to Duterte’s war on drugs. When Khan succeeded Bensouda in 2021, he maintained that the work was carried out by a team of lawyers under a deputy prosecutor, not by him directly.
Khan also argued that a prosecutor’s obligations are “entirely different” from those of a legal representative, stressing that his prior role should not cast doubt on his impartiality. He added that Rule 34 of the ICC’s Rules of Procedure, which Kaufman cited as grounds for disqualification, could not apply since there was no formal “case” at the time of his earlier involvement.
