Nicholas Kaufman, Duterte’s Lawyer, Clarifies Plea on Disqualification of ICC Prosecutor
Duterte’s lawyer Nicholas Kaufman denied dropping their camp’s request for the disqualification of International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan from the ICC case against the former President.
Former Pres. Rodrigo Roa Duterte is faced with an allegation of crimes against humanity before the ICC for the drug war of his administration. He is detained under the custody of the foreign court since March in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Duterte family members are taking turns to visit the former President inside the ICC detention facility. The confirmation of charges against him is scheduled on September 23. Ahead of the September hearing, the ICC Registry revealed receiving more than 300 applications from alleged drug war victims who want to participate in the case against the former President.
Also, ahead of the September hearing, the camp of the former President also asked for the disqualification of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan from the case against him. According to Duterte’s lawyer, the ICC Prosecutor allegedly committed “grievous conflict of interest”.
Nicholas Kaufman, Duterte’s lawyer, claimed that the ICC Prosecutor supposed “abused the criminal process to push forward an investigation in which he had an undeclared personal interest, or at the very least an undeclared personal obligation from which he had not sought to release himself”.
The ICC legal team of Duterte also previously asked the foreign court for the disqualification of ICC judges María del Socorro Flores Liera and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou from the case. However, the ICC denied the appeal of the camp of the former President.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan insisted that there is allegedly “no conflict of interest” in his involvement in the case against former Pres. Rodrigo Roa Duterte. The ICC Prosecutor previously admitted that he was part of the legal team that represented more than 100 supposed victims of the drug war of the Duterte administration and they filed a submission to then ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.
However, Khan also stressed that after which, he “withdrew from the matter and ceased any involvement shortly thereafter”. Recently, there were reports that Duterte’s lawyer withdrew their camp’s request for the disqualification of the ICC Prosecutor. However, Kaufman recently refuted the reports.
Based on a report on Inquirer, Duterte’s lawyer Nicholas Kaufman clarified that they did not withdrew their request to the ICC for the disqualification of Prosecutor Karim Khan from the case. According to him, they requested for the removal of Khan’s involvement from the legal proceedings after it was allegedly made aware of the ‘true extent of his conflict and bias’.
Based on the report, Kaufman also claimed that Khan supposed has “hidden materials concerning his former representation from the court, including the fact that he had targeted the former president as the first among several worthy of prosecution back in 2018″. According to Duterte’s lawyer, the recent reports quoted their initial filing which was made in April.
According to the British-Israeli Lawyer, then, they told the pretrial court that he found “no ostensible reason to doubt the prosecutor’s impartiality” of ICC prosecutor Karim Khan as they depended on ‘‘the presumption of prosecutorial regularity’. However, they continued to gather evidence from the different sources.
Recently, ahead of the confirmation of charges hearing, the lawyers of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte renewed their request for his ICC interim release to an undisclosed country.