The lawyer for the victims in former president Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war has asked the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Appeals Chamber to grant her a “varying standard time limit” to respond to the defense team’s disqualification case against ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan.

In a four-page document released by the ICC on Aug. 15, Office of the Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV) Principal Counsel Paolina Massidda said that it needs more time to respond to the defense team’s request to disqualify Khan.

She argued that at the time of the defense’s filing of the disqualification petition on Aug. 6, the OPCV did not have access to the documents that “primarily formed the basis of the Defence Request.”

The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I only granted her access to the documents five days—on Aug. 11–after the defense’s filing.

“Considering the ten days deadline established by regulation 34(b) of the Regulations of the Court to file a response, and, in light of the importance of the matter under litigation for the interests of the victims, the Legal Representative requests the Appeals Chamber to vary the standard time limit for filing her a response so that the relevant time limit starts running from the date of notification of the said documents,” she said.

In a separate filing by Duterte’s lead counsel, Atty. Nicholas Kaufman recognized that Khan’s “voluntary notifications” of the conflict of interest that may arise from his involvement in representing one of the victims of the drug war as a private lawyer before his appointment to the ICC Prosecution.

“On the face of the notifications, there is no ostensible reason to doubt the Prosecutor’s impartiality or his assertions that he is not conflicted on account of his former representation of [REDACTED],” the document read.

“Accordingly, and despite the mandatory nature of Article 42(7) of the Rome Statute, the Defence, for its part, will not impede the smooth running of proceedings by seeking the Prosecutor’s disqualification,” it added.

Kaufman also credited Khan for immediately contacting him after his appointment to brief him on the issue.

Duterte’s defense team has been seeking the disqualification of Khan because of his role in representing an alleged policy of extra-judicial drug-related killings in the Philippines that could be considered an “irreconcilable conflict of interest.”

Khan is currently on self-imposed leave due to allegations of sexual misconduct.

Aside from the Chief Prosecutor, the defense team also sought previously asked the ICC to disqualify two judges of the PTC I, though this was already rejected by the ICC.

These moves came ahead of the scheduled Sept. 23 confirmation of charges hearing against Duterte, who has been detained in The Hague, Netherlands since March 14 for charges of crimes against humanity of murder in relation to his brutal war on drugs policy.