SENATOR WANTS ICC PROSECUTOR TO ATTEND PROBE

SEN. Francis Tolentino said he will invite International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Kamir Khan to an inquiry on Senate resolutions seeking to defend former president Rodrigo Duterte.

"I'm thinking of having a resource person coming from the ICC itself. If they agree they can attend even through Zoom," the senator said in an online interview on Wednesday.

The chairman of the Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights is set to hear the resolutions filed by Senators Robinhood Padilla and Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada, seeking to defend Duterte from the ICC investigation on his war on drugs.

The senator said that he also plans to invite Duterte.

"There will be a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate because the Senate was the body which ratified, which concurred in this Rome Statute," Tolentino said.

The ICC has rejected the request of the Philippine government to cancel its investigation on Duterte's alleged bloody campaign against drugs.

"I would want to have Mr. Khan explain the reason why they insisted that the pleading filed by the Office of the Solicitor General was not complete, was not conclusive enough," Tolentino said.

"Our President has made it clear: the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines. Our Solicitor General has also said the Philippines has no legal or moral obligation to cooperate with the ICC," Padilla said in a statement.

"The ICC seems to be standing on shaky ground. It has no power to force itself on the sovereignty of our motherland, the Philippines," the senator added.

2023-03-29T16:34:49Z dg43tfdfdgfd