ICC off limits under int’l law

The top lawyer of former President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday said the International Criminal Court investigation into the war on drugs lacks legitimacy.

The intransigence of ICC in pushing for a probe not only recklessly transgresses our territorial integrity and sovereignty but also violates the law creating it, former Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo told the Daily Tribune.

He said the ICC never acquired jurisdiction over the country because the constitutional requirement for making it effective is wanting.

He added that even assuming it initially acquired jurisdiction, it lost it when the country formally withdrew its membership to the body.

Panelo added that the case against former President Duterte has been politicized from its very inception and is intended to demonize him internationally and taint the success of the war against illegal drugs.

A functioning justice system negates the need for the ICC to initiate an investigation into the war on drugs, a Department of Justice official said, meanwhile.

“ICC cannot supplant or substitute the function of local courts,” Department of Justice spokesperson Mico Clavano said.

The ICC has authorized Special Prosecutor Karim Khan to resume the investigation of the drug war of the previous regime.

“Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla did not welcome the decision to authorize the resumption of the investigation because we have a working justice system. There is an international law called the complementarity principle,” he said.

He added: “This principle means that the ICC or any international court can only come in when the country cannot pursue the investigation or is unwilling to investigate. And that requires the government to be unwilling or unable to investigate.”

Thorough investigation

The government, he said, did a genuine investigation into the killings from 2016 up to 2019 even up to the end of 2022.

“If there’s a working justice system then the ICC cannot come in, and supplant or substitute our working justice system with their own,” Clavano explained.

He added that under international law, ICC can only complement the country’s investigation, and not substitute it.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ICC AT THE ICC office at The Hague, its Special Prosecutor Karim Khan was authorized to resume the probe on the war on drugs despite the volumes of evidence presented by the government, including proof of the presence of a functioning judiciary.