The findings of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations headed by presidential sister Senator Imee Marcos can help prove to the International Criminal Court (ICC) that former president Rodrigo Duterte must be granted interim release based on the supposed unconstitutionality of his arrest, defense lead counsel Nicholas Kaufman said.

The lawyer, in an interview in The Hague, explained that the committee report counters the prosecution’s argument against that Duterte poses a flight risk because of the questions he raised against the ICC’s jurisdiction.

“As you may be aware, the prosecution has argued that Mr. Duterte is a flight risk. And they base that inter alia and the argument that he has expressed through his counsel that his surrender to the court was essentially an illegal rendition,” he said in a video posted on Alvin & Tourism Facebook page.

“We believe that the report counters that. We believe that raising an argument as to the legality of the surrender is a legitimate legal argument,” he added.

Kaufman, however, did not provide more details about the case because “litigation should be conducted in court.”

In a 10-page document submitted to the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I (PTC I) last month, Duterte’s camp requested that it be allowed to file a reply to the prosecution’s arguments versus the interim release application.

The defense argued that the former president’s refusal to surrender to an “unconstitutional” arrest and his legal team’s claim of “extraordinary rendition” must not be used against his interim release request because the Senate committee report outlined the “domestic unlawfulness” of the arrest.

In asking the PTC I to allow the defense to submit the committee findings and officially enter it into record, it underscored “the overtly political motives underpinning Mr. Duterte’s arrest and surrender to the Court, highlighting ‘a whole-of-government effort to bring down the Dutertes’.”

“The Committee's findings corresponded to Counsel's utterances, namely that Mr Duterte's arrest and handover were the result of ‘political manoeuvring’ designed to ‘politically cripple’ his family,” the document read.

“Leave to reply will permit the Defence to present official Senate documentation to balance the factual gossip presented by the Prosecution, derived not from proper investigative work but, rather, from newspaper clippings,” it added.

The findings, published on the Senate website, stated that high-ranking government officials may have committed criminal and administrative offenses in the arrest of the former president last March 11 and his being brought to The Hague, Netherlands on the same day.