(Eagle News) — Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Friday, Sept. 28, urged the International Criminal Court to expedite its investigation into the two communication reports filed by President Rodrigo Duterte’s critics against him in connection with the drug war.
Trillanes made the statement after Duterte made a statement that the senator said was tantamount to the chief executive admitting he had a hand in the so-called extrajudicial killings in the country.
The Palace has denied this was the case, though, with Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo saying the President only meant the so-called EJK issue was the only issue his critics were using against him because the other issues, such as corruption, do not apply to him.
“Those remarks uttered in unguarded moments, ‘yun ‘yung mga bits of truth na lumalabas dito kay Duterte. Madalas itong nagsisinungaling pero ‘yung mga ganyang unguarded moments d’yan lumalabas ‘yung kanyang saloobin,” Trillanes said.
“Ano kasalanan ko? Nagnakaw ba ako dyan ni piso? Did I prosecute somebody na pinakulong ko? Ang kasalanan ko lang yung mga extrajudicial killing,” Duterte said in a speech on Thursday, Sept. 27.
In the same speech though, Duterte said there was no proof that could tie him to the killings he said were done by unscrupulous policemen.
It was Trillanes and Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano who filed a supplemental communication to the communication filed by lawyer Jude Sabio against Duterte before the ICC.
The President, however, already announced the country’s withdrawal from the ICC in March, citing the “baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks on my person as against my administration, engineered by the officials of the United Nations, as well as the attempt by the (ICC) special prosecutor to place my person within the jurisdiction of the (ICC)” as reasons.
The “actuations and statement of UN special rapporteur Agnes Callamard and UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Zeid Raad Al-Hussein,” he said, in particular, “readily show international bias and refusal of some sectors of the international community to support the Philippines legitimate efforts at self-determination, nation-building and independence from foreign influence and control.”
He said this was “coupled by the implication of culpability that the preliminary examination by prosecutor Fatou Besouda unduly and maliciously created.”
“It is apparent that the ICC is being utilized as a political tool against the Philippines,” he said.