MANILA: Lawyers representing the victims of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war are undaunted by his new legal team, saying their “strong evidence” against him will make it hard for the defence to win, no matter how brilliant they may be.
Duterte recently hired out of his own pocket Peter Haynes from the United Kingdom and Kate Gibson from Australia. Both are veteran defence lawyers with at least two decades of experience in defending international clients, including former Congolese rebel leader and Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, whose conviction for war crimes they managed to get overturned upon appeal.
However, Filipino lawyers Gilbert Andres and Neri Colmenares, who have been fighting for the cause of the drug war victims before the International Criminal Court (ICC) where Duterte is about to be tried for crimes against humanity of murder, said the available evidence against Duterte will edge out the might and brilliance of any lawyer he picks.
“At the end of the day, this is really about the facts, the evidence and the law. So whatever were the previous cases of any of the counsels, this is a new case—the prosecutor v. Rodrigo Roa Duterte,” Andres told the Inquirer in a phone interview.
As one of the common legal representatives of victims, along with another Filipino human rights lawyer, Joel Butuyan, Andres believes the prosecution has “strong evidence” to show that Duterte is guilty of the thousands of killings linked to his crackdown on drugs.
Facts unchanged
For Colmenares of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), Duterte’s decision to revamp his defence team will not have an impact on the case as the “facts and the evidence remain the same.”
He said the strength of the prosecution’s evidence is a stark contrast to the lack of evidence favouring Duterte, which will be a challenge to his new defence team.
“I don’t see any evidence that he can submit to show that he had no role in the drug war,” Colmenares told the Inquirer. “Even if you put 10 lawyers in there, it’s all the same. The new lawyer has to face that dearth of evidence on the part of his client.”
The NUPL lawyer, who accompanied some of the drug war victims to The Hague for the confirmation of charges hearing held in February, said the change in Duterte’s legal team at a crucial stage could have been prompted by the series of losses they suffered.
“Duterte is not used to losing. From the time he was [Davao City] Mayor up to the time he became President, all of the investigation he was subjected to ended in his favour because he was powerful [in the Philippines]… The cards were also stacked in his favour,” Colmenares said.
But in The Hague, Duterte’s petition for interim release has been repeatedly rejected, along with his challenge questioning the jurisdiction of the ICC, as well as his requests to the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) I to declare him “unfit” to stand trial due to age and various illnesses.
Still, Duterte’s decision to replace his lead counsel Nicholas Kaufman took Colmenares by surprise.
“I’ve been hearing about this [change in defence counsel], but I didn’t expect it to actually happen because Kaufman, no matter what his position is, vigorously defended Duterte,” he said.
Duterte’s former Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello III, one of the six Filipino lawyers whom Kaufman had introduced to the PTC I chamber during the confirmation hearing, said the same thing.
“The truth is I was impressed by his presentation of the defence of the former President. It was very clean and very well stated and well supported,” Bello said of the British-Israeli lawyer.
“But you know, no matter how good the defence is, the ICC has already prejudged [the case],” he claimed.
‘Reliable hands’
Kaufman, who formally asked the Trial Chamber III to allow him to step down as Duterte’s lead counsel on May 8, said he was “relieved” the case “has fallen into the reliable hands” of Haynes.
The two worked together in the Gombo case, with Kaufman as a legal consultant and Haynes as the lead defence counsel in the trial phase. Gibson was also on the defence team as associated counsel.
Asked by the Inquirer whether he had given the new defence team any pointers for Duterte’s case, Kaufman said he was “obviously not at liberty to disclose the content of such discussions other than to point out that Mr. Haynes has, as expected, announced his intention to revisit the issue of the former President’s fitness to stand trial.”
“Indeed, it will not have escaped the notice of many that the former President’s cognitive, motor and visuospatial deficiencies, with which the defence has grappled for more than a year, are clearly evident in the faltering written mandate given to Mr. Haynes,” he added. - Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN
