Duterte Camp Urges ICC to Enhance Evidence Verification

The camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to amend its E-Court Protocol to strengthen verification requirements for open-source and user-generated material submitted as evidence. In a submission before the ICC Trial Chamber III, the defense flagged several problems with the prosecution’s evidence, including illegible documents, audiovisual files without transcripts or translations, and pages from the same document being disclosed separately under different and nonconsecutive evidence reference numbers. "Based on a small sample of documents from the same dataset which has already been received by the defense, it is clear that there are major issues with this collection of documents; it includes many duplicates and documents of very poor quality which, notwithstanding its volume, makes meaningful review immensely challenging," the defense said. The defense said the prosecution had disclosed more than 25,000 evidence items as of the latest count, up from just over 5,000 items submitted before the confirmation hearing in February. The prosecution has also signaled plans to submit another 200 gigabytes of material, the defense said. "With three months until the start of trial, the defense is deeply concerned that the quality and quantity of the evidence in this case risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material. This would be detrimental for the parties and the Chamber’s search for the truth, and reputationally damaging for the Court," the defense said. "This concern is particularly heightened in this case where, unlike in other cases previously before the Court, the parties and Chamber are operating in an environment where a huge volume of misinformation is being routinely created and shared online about these proceedings and the events on which they focus." To mitigate this risk, the defense proposed adding an “Expert Verification” field to the E-Court Protocol for open-source and user-generated evidence. The field would indicate whether an item submitted to the Court would be accompanied by an expert report. "In the defense’s view, any such expert report ought to include, at a minimum, information on: the source of the item (both the sender/uploader and the creator of the piece of evidence, if known); its chain of custody and whether the item is the original or a copy; its metadata and any other technical aspects, such as the hash value generated at the time of capture; the steps taken to verify the material and to check for editing or manipulation," the defense said. "It should also include information on the qualifications and experience of the person who undertook those steps to verify the material on behalf of the tendering party, and the methodology that they followed. Without this information, it would be very difficult for the Chamber to come to a view on the evidence’s relevance and admissibility, pursuant to Article 69(4) of the [Rome] Statute," it added. It suggested that the Court approve a template for expert verification reports ahead of trial. Duterte has been in ICC custody since March 2025 in connection with charges of crimes against humanity over killings during his tenure as Davao City mayor and in relation to the war on drugs during his presidency. The trial is set to begin on November 30, 2026. — VBL, GMA News