'Find a firing squad, I am ready,' Duterte dares ICC with review set to begin

President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday dared the International Criminal Court (ICC) to sentence him to death in connection with his heavy-handed approach to curbing illegal drugs.

At a press briefing in Davao City, Duterte said he is willing to sit down with ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who is set to do an initial review of the allegation of crime against humanity forwarded by Jude Sabio, the lawyer of confessed hitman Edgar Matobabato. 

"I welcome you and if you want to find me guilty, so be it. Find a country where they killed people with a firing squad. And I’m ready. If you hail me into a rigmarole of trial and trial, no need. Go ahead and proceed in your investigation. Find me guilty, of course, you can do that. I do not want imprisonment," Duterte said.

Duterte, however, said he could not be prosecuted for orchestrating extrajudicial killings attributed to the drug war, saying such crime does not exist in the country's penal laws.

"There is no f—ing provision on extrajudicial killing. It is not defined anywhere," he said.

The President also insisted that he never instructed authorities to kill drug suspects.

“I never ordered a specific Mr. Santos or Mr. Cruz. I just told them, ‘Destroy the apparatus of the drug syndicates,’” he said.

“And you guys, if you destroy my city, I will kill you. If you destroy the young of this land, I will kill you.”

Malacañang on Thursday said the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) would begin its preliminary examination on the extrajudicial killings associated with the government’s intensified anti-illegal drugs campaign, which kicked off when Duterte assumed office on June 30, 2016.

But it clarified that a preliminary examination does not equate to a formal preliminary investigation, but is merely a procedure conducted by the ICC to determine whether the case falls under its jurisdiction.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque, a lawyer, said that in order to exercise jurisdiction, The Hague-based ICC has to establish the admissibility of the case, consider interest of justice, and the principle of complementarity should be implemented.

This means that the ICC can only investigate criminal cases if the domestic courts are unable or unwilling to do so.

"Our domestic courts are able and willing to prosecute these crimes, the ICC is not a course of first instance, the ICC is only a court of last resort," Roque said in a press briefing on Friday in Sagñay, Camarines Sur.

"Moreover the alleged deaths attributed to the war on drugs is because of lawful police operations and cannot therefore constitute an attack against civilians which is required in the international crime of crimes against humanity." —JST, GMA News