The spokesperson for the International Criminal Court (ICC) clarified that the international body is taking “all necessary measures” to ensure the well-being of its detainees after Vice President Sara Duterte said that their family received information that detained former president Rodrigo Duterte was once found unconscious in his room.

“Respecting the right to privacy, we do not comment on matters related to private situation of a detained person,” ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah said in a statement on Saturday, Sept. 28.

“The Court also takes all necessary measures for the preservation of physical and psychological well-being of all detainees,” he added.

The spokesman also stressed that the ICC acts “in accordance with the ICC Rome Statute and relevant applicable rules and follows the international standards of detained persons having access to consular representatives” in response to the Vice President’s claims that the ICC violated her father’s privacy and endangered his life for allowing the welfare check of officials from the Philippine Embassy in The Hague.

“Such visits, if any, are strictly conducted with the approval or at the request of the person in detention,” the ICC official stressed.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) also deferred to the ICC spokesman’s statement when asked about the former president’s medical condition.

It also stressed that the consular visit “was made by career consular officials of the Embassy in a professional, nonintrusive and respectful manner, and not by any other supposed ‘agents of the government.’”

This as the Vice President alleged in a separate statement that the ICC allowed “agents of the government that abducted former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte to intrude upon him and exploit his frail and compromised health.”

Atty. Nicholas Kaufman, the former president’s lead counsel, said that the 80-year-old former leader reported “a couple of incidents” when he fell in his cell, with at least one incident that caused him to lose consciousness and had to be sent to the hospital where he was supposedly “assessed for cranial and brain injury.”

“The former President is fatigued from his detention and physically incapacitated by various medical conditions afflicting a person of his advanced age,” he added, while also criticizing the “surreptitious visit” of the embassy officials “to gather intelligence under the pretense of offering supposed ‘care and concern’ for the welfare of one its citizens.”

The Duterte camp is seeking the interim release of the former president to a third-party country, and is also urging the ICC’s pre-trial chamber for the adjournment of all legal proceedings against him because of his declining cognitive functions.

The former chief executive is facing multiple counts of murder charges for the thousands of killings in the name of his administration’s brutal drug war.

He was scheduled for a confirmation of charges hearing on Sept. 23 but this was postponed by the pre-trial court, citing the defense’s claim that Duterte is unfit to stand trial.