By Joyce Rocamora
MANILA – The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecution is planning to fly in and present five witnesses in the trial of former President Rodrigo Duterte before the court for 2026.
ICC Prosecutor and Senior Trial Lawyer Julian Nicholls at the fourth status conference in the ICC case of Duterte on Tuesday told trial judges that the witnesses — identified in filings by code numbers 1302, 1100, 1400, 1263 and 0009 — will “all be present unless something unforeseen” occurs.
“[J]ust depending on some logistics, the second and third witnesses, we might have to swap them; I don’t think so, but those are the five that we planned for this year,” he said.
“Not knowing the exact sitting schedule when we put this together, how many hours or days, but this seems like an appropriate amount that we think would fill that time,” he added.
Nicholls said analysts had reviewed and compared a large dataset relating to murders during police operations as well as deaths under investigation related to the war on drugs, and within that set counted roughly 3,400 drug personalities who died during anti-illegal narcotics operations between July 2016 and November 2017.
He noted that a 2017 accomplishment report by the then Presidential Communications Operations Office during the Duterte administration had indicated that 3,967 drug personalities actually died in the same period.
“So here, the President, through the Communications Office, is listing as one of the accomplishments this number of persons who died from July 1 through November 17. That is the same time period for the dataset that we have gone through page by page and counted up,” he said.
“So, we’ve counted up 3,422 deaths. Our proposed agreed facts are 3,400 deaths. And the President’s administration, for the same time period, says 3,697 [SIC] deaths. So, this shouldn’t be difficult to come to an agreement on,” he added.
Lead Defense counsel Peter Haynes, meanwhile, pressed for a lawyer-led review of the material while claiming the prosecution used artificial intelligence to summarize the documents.
He pointed out that the dataset contains thousands of items that previously took another institution resources and a year to review.
Nicholls, for his part, refuted the defense, saying analysts and some lawyers had gone through the material page by page, manually.
The ICC Trial Chamber III said it intends to begin the hearings with a compact first-week schedule starting at 10 a.m. (The Hague time) until 4 p.m. with breaks in between to accommodate the needs of Duterte and the availability of the witnesses. (PNA)
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ICC TRIAL. Former President Rodrigo Duterte appears again before ICC Trial Chamber III during the fourth status conference in his crime against humanity case on Tuesday (Oct. 13, 2026). The ICC is set to open his trial on Nov. 30, 2026.
