{"id":99696,"date":"2017-04-24T23:18:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T03:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=99696"},"modified":"2017-04-24T23:18:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T03:18:24","slug":"philippines-lawyer-alleges-president-duterte-link-to-deaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/04\/24\/philippines-lawyer-alleges-president-duterte-link-to-deaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Philippines lawyer alleges President Duterte link to deaths"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cIt<\/a>
\u201cIt is a case for crimes against humanity against President Rodrigo Duterte and senior officials in his government,\u201d lawyer Jude Sabio told The Associated Press outside the court after presenting to prosecutors a 77-page file outlining the allegations. (Photo: Presidential Communications (Government of the Philippines)\/ Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

THE HAGUE \u2013A\u00a0Filipino\u00a0lawyer on Monday presented documents to the International Criminal Court which he said contain evidence of the alleged involvement of President Rodrigo Duterte in extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers and other crime suspects.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a case for crimes against humanity against President Rodrigo Duterte and senior officials in his government,\u201d lawyer Jude Sabio told The Associated Press outside the court after presenting to prosecutors a 77-page file outlining the allegations.<\/p>\n

The court receives many such communications about alleged crimes from around the world and prosecutors are not obliged to open preliminary investigations based on them. However, Sabio’s filing comes after ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said last year that she was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d by reports of killings in the\u00a0Philippines, adding that statements by \u201chigh officials\u201d in the Asian nation \u201cseem to condone such killings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabio said the documents he filed were based in large part on the recent testimony of two men, Edgardo Matobato and Arturo Lascanas, to a\u00a0Philippine\u00a0Senate inquiry.<\/p>\n

Lascanas, a retired police officer, has claimed that Duterte was linked to hundreds of extrajudicial killings when he was mayor of Davao City in the southern\u00a0Philippines.\u00a0Lascanas told The AP last month that he’s ready to testify in domestic and international courts.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Philippines\u00a0joined the court in 2011, giving prosecutors jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed since then. The ICC is a court of last resort, intended to take on cases from nations unable or unwilling to prosecute alleged atrocities.<\/p>\n

The present nationwide anti-drugs crackdown, which has left thousands of mostly poor drug suspects dead, has alarmed the United States, other Western governments and U.N. human rights officials. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has said Lascanas’ allegations linking Duterte to past killings heighten \u201cthe urgent need\u201d for an independent U.N. investigation.<\/p>\n

In Manila, presidential spokesman Ernie Abella said \u201cthe so-called extra-judicial killings are not state-sanctioned or state-sponsored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Police conduct legitimate operations based on established procedures and violators face sanctions and criminal charges, Abella said, adding the ICC would likely dismiss the complaint because Sabio or his client, Edgardo Matobato, did not exhaust all legal remedies in the\u00a0Philippines\u00a0as required by the international court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intent of this filing in ICC is clearly to embarrass and shame the president, and undermine the duly constituted government of the\u00a0Philippines,\u201d Abella said in a statement. The complaint, he said, was filed to tarnish the image of the\u00a0Philippines, which is hosting an annual summit of leaders of the Association of\u00a0Southeast Asian\u00a0Nations this week.<\/p>\n

Sabio said that the Senate testimony of Lascanas and Matobato \u201cdirectly pointed to mayor Duterte as the leader and mastermind of the Davao death squad.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says the documents filed with ICC prosecutors allege \u201cthat there is a continuation of that practice or strategy of eliminating or killing persons suspected of crimes and that continuation is happening in his war on drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE HAGUE \u2013A\u00a0Filipino\u00a0lawyer on Monday presented documents to the International Criminal Court which he said contain evidence of the alleged …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":99697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,16,95],"tags":[11147,12477,13135],"class_list":["post-99696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-extrajudicial-killings","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-president-rodrigo-duterte","mauthors-mike-corder","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}