The Philippine government did not surrender former president Rodrigo Duterte to a foreign power, Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Juanito Victor ‘Jonvic’ Remulla said on Thursday, March 13, amid criticisms of the arrest and transfer of custody of the ex-chief executive to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Did we submit them to a foreign leader? We did not. Did we submit him into an unfair condition? It is a tribunal court. They can argue their case there and we welcome it," Remulla said.
Remulla confirmed that the Philippine government chartered the plane that brought the former president to The Hague, Netherlands.
When pressed that Duterte should have been first brought to a proper court of authority in the custodial state, Remulla said he can neither interpret the law nor is he a competent authority to do so because he is not a lawyer.
However, Remulla found it amusing why a Duterte supporter kept on bringing up the ex-president’s rights, asking what about the rights of the 30,000 victims, who were summarily killed “without judicial action, without charges.’’
“30,000 (victims) were killed without any due process,’’ Remulla stressed.
Remulla asked the Duterte camp to bring their case to the court but questioned where the 30,000 killed allowed to go to the court, where the 30,000 read their rights when they were executed, where they allowed to plead their case?
Further, Remulla, not being a lawyer, pointed out “taking the side of the 30,000, who were slaughtered, they were killed, tortured, they were ordinary filipinos deprived of their life and liberty and they were deprived of their due process.’’
The DILG chief also asked the Duterte supporters to defend the 30,000 victims of the previous administration’s drug war and not only the case of the former president.
Remulla stated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is in the porcess of collating of the evidence and were in the “investigated phase.’’
He noted that the DOJ “will not present a case without the certainty of conviction’’ in response to questions if Duterte will have a fair trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and not in the Philippine courts.