ICC denies Duterte defense bid to add expert verification on evidence, says it would be a 'needless delay'
The International Criminal Court Trial Chamber III denied the request of former president Rodrigo Duterte's legal team to allow experts to verify evidence submitted, saying the extra step may cause unnecessary delay.
In a seven-page decision released on Sept. 28, judges Joanna Korner, Keebong Paek, and Nicolas Guillou wrote that the defense's request requires "expert verification reports [to] always accompany open source and user-generated evidence submitted to the Chamber."
If the court were to allow this extra step, the judges said, it could be "unnecessary and could well have the effect of causing a needless delay to the start of the trial."
The defense made the request citing the large volume of open-source evidence brought by the prosecution. According to Duterte's legal team, the disclosed evidence has multiple duplicates "and documents of very poor quality." Reviewing them would be "immensely challenging". The defense added that the amount of evidence "risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material."
If the Court allows experts to verify each piece of evidence, the defense said it would be "the first step to ensuring that only properly verified open-source material is submitted."
Over 15,000 pieces of evidence are on the prosecution's list of evidence, the Court said, as it recalled its order to both parties to avoid "having evidence dumped into the court record." Nevertheless, the Court also confirmed that evidence would be reviewed to avoid the list being "repetitive, irrelevant, or over-voluminous."
The defense's request for expert verification reports for each piece of open-sourced evidence, however, is not needed, said the Chamber.
Under its rules for court proceedings, the Chamber reiterated that parties are required to "raise issues" if they deem a certain piece of evidence submitted to the Chamber is inadmissible.
"The defense is primarily responsible to identify and raise these issues for individual prosecution's evidence," the Chamber wrote. When an issue is raised, the prosecution will then decide whether or not it will submit supporting materials, which may include an expert's verification report.
In the same decision, the Chamber granted the prosecution's request to create a URL metadata field, which will make it easier for parties and participants to identify the URL "associated with the open-source evidence at the time it was captured."
Duterte's trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 30.
He has been in detention at The Hague since March 12, 2025 after he was arrested in Manila on March 11, 2025 over alleged crimes against humanity. On April 23, 2026, the ICC confirmed all three counts of murder as crimes against humanity against Duterte. The charges are related to the former president's war on drugs during his term.
Watch
WATCH: Can you still trust someone who betrayed you? (Generations Ep. 22)
September 23, 2026
WATCH: LGBTQIA+ people with unlikely professions
June 28, 2026
WATCH: Discovering Vietnam in three days
June 9, 2026