One more hearing day remains before Pre-Trial Chamber I concludes proceedings, but lead defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman is already refusing to score the week’s arguments. “I’m not gonna give you points, I’m not gonna give points to the prosecution or the victims or even to myself,” the British-Israeli lawyer told reporters after Thursday’s session. “We must wait until tomorrow and see what happens. One more day.”
That restraint was not shared by Duterte’s Filipino legal allies. Former Presidential Chief Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo declared to the press that the prosecution’s crimes against humanity theory had collapsed under the weight of Kaufman’s rebuttals on the third day of the confirmation of charges hearing at the International Criminal Court. “The prosecution’s theory has been shattered to pieces… because the very testimonial evidence, the documentary evidence presented by the prosecution have been thoroughly rebutted,” Panelo said, as reported by ABS-CBN News. He credited Kaufman’s extensive review of speeches and documents as the reason the defense was able to counter every allegation. “In short, bagsak sila,” he added.
Rights lawyer Neri Colmenares, who has represented drug war victims in the Philippines, took a sharply different view. He argued that the defense’s central contention — that no common plan existed among perpetrators — misses the legal threshold entirely. “Sabi nila wala namang common plan, hindi naman nagkita ang mga yun para mag-usap at mag-agree, mashashatter ba ang prosekyusyon? Hindi kasi wala naman requirement na mag-meeting meeting yung walong co-perpetrators at si Duterte para ipakita na may common plan,” Colmenares said. He pointed to public killings carried out in markets and plazas before witnesses as evidence that those responsible felt entirely untouchable.
ICC Assistant to Counsel Kristina Conti framed the defense’s performance in similarly skeptical terms, telling ABS-CBN News that Duterte’s camp had barely dented the prosecution’s case. “Kumbaga may kaunti kayong natatanggal na kaunting bakbak ng pintura, pero ito yung tipo na pwede mong i-white out o lagyan ng chalk so okay pa,” she said, adding that nothing presented rose to the level of a genuine dismantling of the evidence.
Among those watching the proceedings was Llore Pasco, who lost two sons to the drug war in 2017. She said the defense’s framing of casualty figures reduced her family to a statistic. “Nakikita po namin na talagang minaliit po ang aming pagkatao. Ni walang halaga ‘yung aming mga mahal sa buhay, number lang,” Pasco said. “Hindi binigyang halaga yung aming paghihirap, yung aming pagdurusa.”
Kaufman, who acknowledged seeing Pasco crying in the gallery, said he did not dismiss her pain. “I’m a human being, we’re all human beings and I don’t make light of her grief,” he said. “Having said that, I have a job to do and my job is to defend somebody who I believe has been wrongly charged.”
Among the defense’s core arguments before the chamber was that no direct link exists between Duterte and the killings, and that deaths during the anti-drug campaign represented roughly three percent of those arrested.
