Three counts of murder were filed on Monday by the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors against former president Rodrigo Duterte amid claims by his family that a third country is open to hosting him if he is released.

The three charges of murder as a crime against humanity allege the 80-year-old’s hand in the killings of at least 76 people in his brutal campaign on drug dealers and users as city mayor in southern Philippines, and later as president.  

Duterte committed the crimes as an “indirect co-perpetrator,” the ICC prosecutors said in a document filed with the Pre-Trial Chamber I on Monday. The document details the charges against him. 

“It’s relatively good news that the number of murder incidents and victims has increased from 43 to 76,” the ICC-accredited lawyer Joel Butuyan told CoverStory by phone from The Hague on Tuesday night (Philippine time).

Between November 2011 and March 2019, Duterte and his co-perpetrators “shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralise’ alleged criminals in the Philippines through violent crimes including murder,” the ICC prosecutors said.

The first count cites the killings of 19 victims on Duterte’s watch as mayor of Davao City between 2013 and around 2016.

The second and third count cover suspects killed in the then President’s expanded war on drugs: 14 “high-value” targets between 2016 and 2017, and 43 others during “clearance operations” between 2016 and 2018.

The ICC prosecutors noted that in several instances, Duterte publicly identified individuals or held up a chart linking personalities to the illegal drug trade. Duterte deployed the “Davao death squad,” government agents, non-uniformed assets and hitmen to kill the alleged criminals, the prosecutors said. 

“The attack was also systematic in that it was planned, organized and executed in a coordinated fashion, with the acts perpetrated in a clear pattern of violence directed at the targeted population,” they said. 

The charges were to be read to Duterte in a confirmation hearing originally set for Tuesday afternoon, but this was indefinitely postponed to give the judges time to evaluate the claim of his lawyers that he is unfit to stand trial.

Duterte is now detained at the Scheveningen Prison in The Hague. He was arrested in Manila on March 11 for crimes against humanity, specifically the murder of 43 people in the course of his anti-drug campaign.

According to Butuyan, each count of murder in the charges will be treated as a separate case.

He lamented, however, that the filing of charges left out 400,000 victims of unlawful arrests and imprisonment on the watch of Duterte as Davao City mayor and then as president.

“It’s not so good for the victims who were not covered,” Butuyan said, adding that the Office of the Prosecutor may have lacked time and logistics to gather sufficient evidence for these crimes, among other “possible” reasons.

The prosecution has admitted that “the actual scale of victimisation during the charged period was significantly greater, as reflected in the widespread nature of the attack.”

Meanwhile, Gilbert Andres, also an ICC-accredited lawyer, said there are redactions in the document to protect the victims and potential witnesses, and avoid sending “advance information” to personalities “who might be implicated.”

“I have not heard of anything like that,” Andres told radio station dzMM on Tuesday evening when asked if the arrest of other respondents is in the offing, “because the focus is on the confirmation charges.”

The identities of Duterte’s co-perpetrators are also redacted in the document.

No date has been set yet for the confirmation hearing. Both Butuyan and Andres said the court will next decide on Duterte’s fitness to stand trial, his motion for his interim release, and his challenge against the court’s jurisdiction, among others.

“In the ranks of the victims, we believe he’s fit to stand trial because Vice President Sara Duterte herself said that she spoke with him last Friday about politics, flood control, and love life,” Andres told the local radio station from The Hague. 

The Vice President was also reported as saying that a third country has agreed to host her father if the court grants his motion for interim release.

Asked by CoverStory about the matter, Butuyan issued the reminder to Duterte’s family that the move depends on whether the ex-president can show he would not be a flight risk, would not put the victims and witnesses at risk, and would not divulge the identities of the witnesses to his caretakers.

“[The third country hosting] will only come in when these three pre-conditions are met. They make it sound like it’s the most important consideration. It ranks very low in consideration,” said Butuyan, who is president of the Center for International Law (CenterLaw), a nongovernment organization concerned with litigation on violations of human rights and freedom of expression.  

And if the Vice President’s statement—that her father merely wishes to fly home to Davao City and die there—were an indication, then “there’s no intention to return,” Butuyan said.