Duterte camp submits own report to ICC on ex-President's health

The lawyer of former President Rodrigo Duterte has submitted a joint report prepared by the Duterte camp’s own medical experts to support their assertion that the 80-year-old Duterte’s condition has further deteriorated and warrants his release from detention.

Duterte’s lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman, submitted the joint report to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber I as an annex to a 12-page filing dated January 9.

“The new medical evidence is proffered in order to assist the Pre-Trial Chamber in assessing whether Mr. Duterte’s medical condition sufficiently mitigates his capacity to actualise the statutory risk factors, such that his release to the State Party that has expressed its willingness to receive him may now be contemplated,” the filing said.

The submission of a joint medical report by Duterte’s camp came more than a month after the three-member panel of experts submitted their joint and individual reports on Duterte’s fitness to stand trial.

Citing the joint report, Kaufman said his client “lacks executive functioning, sustained planning capacity, rapid decision-making, physical stamina, and the ability to evade supervision.”

“These capacities are either clearly compromised or, at a minimum, practically unavailable to him in his current condition,” Duterte’s lawyer said.

As to the supposed threat to witnesses and the integrity of the investigation, Kaufman said actualizing such a risk “would require sustained attention, initiative, organisational capacity, and the ability to coordinate intermediaries” and that Duterte “lacks such capacities.”

He added that none of the defense’s experts or the ICC-appointed experts “found any clinical indication of disinhibition, aggression, or manipulative behavioural tendencies.”

“To conclude, the notion of witness intimidation does not align with Mr. Duterte’s functional abilities or with the realities of an environment where his liberty is restricted and strictly supervised,” Kaufman said.

As to the potential for continued commission of crimes, Kaufman said the former President’s “impaired executive functioning, lack of sustained attention, and corresponding inability to plan and to sequence his daily activity would negate his ability to oversee complex chains of command enabling him to commit crimes similar to those with which he is charged.”

“In light of all the aforementioned, the Pre-Trial Chamber is requested to ORDER the interim release of Mr. Duterte on the same terms and conditions as proffered in the originating request, with any additional undertaking, guarantee, or requirement deemed appropriate,” Duterte’s legal counsel added.

He pointed out that a Pre-Trial Chamber shall review a ruling on a suspect’s release or detention at least every 120 days and is “obliged to reconsider its decision on detention where changed circumstances warrant reconsideration of the factors forming the basis for detention.”

Kaufman said the former President is now an “emaciated, infirm and incapacitated shadow of his former self” and suffers from “unexplained weight loss.”

He noted that his client is under constant video surveillance 24/7 not out of concern that he might flee or hurt others, but “based on a grounded fear that harm might befall him.”

“Mr. Duterte is unable to attend to his own nourishment or to his own medication. Neither the Prosecution nor the Pre-Trial Chamber is in a position to dispute the aforementioned progressive enfeeblement because, despite repeated Defence requests, Mr. Duterte has not been seen in court for ten months,” he said.

“When he is finally invited to attend a hearing on his detention, as the statutory framework requires, Mr. Duterte’s demeanour will be assessed and his purported propensity to flee, threaten, or commit crime will be exposed to the world for what it is – a wholly unreasonable and fanciful assertion,” he added.

As to Duterte’s cognitive deficiencies which the defense said were also observed by the ICC-appointed neuropsychologist and neurologist, Kaufman noted that the “the underlying reason for the perceived underperformance remains undetermined and its legal resolution can only be achieved through forensic litigation.”

He added that none of the court-appointed experts concluded that the “’underperformance’ is deliberate or a result of malingering” and that no explanation was given by the experts for the perceived underperformance.

“For this reason alone, it would be wrong for the Pre-Trial Chamber to dismiss Mr. Duterte’s impaired functioning as an attempt to ‘feign illness,’ as the Prosecution insultingly asserts without any foundation whatsoever,” Kaufman said.

“The same may be said of the Prosecution’s shameful and misleading assertion that Mr. Duterte’s weight loss, his voluntary restriction of dietary intake, and his neglect as to his personal appearance are part of a devious plan whereby he is ‘manipulating his physical appearance to match or support his allegedly deteriorated medical condition,’” he added.

Kaufman went on: “Unless the Prosecution should be so brazen as to suggest that Mr. Duterte has acquired such a degree of guile and cunning so as to hoodwink his own lawyers over the course of ten months, any perceived performance invalidity should be attributed to Mr. Duterte’s neurological condition.”

It may be recalled that the ICC-appointed panel of experts submitted their joint and individual reports to the court on December 5, 2025 after conducting a medical examination of Duterte and fitness to stand trial.

The ICC has yet to issue a ruling on this but the ICC Office of the Prosecutor noted that Duterte was found to be able to fully engage and participate in the proceedings against him.

Meanwhile, the Office of Public Counsel for Victims (OPCV) asked the ICC to rule on Duterte’s fitness. The OPCV also requested the court to set the date for the confirmation of charges hearing “without further delay” in light of the drug war victims’ right to a speedy trial.

Earlier on January 9, the ICC rejected a request for leave filed by Duterte’s lawyers to appeal the court’s earlier denial of his bid to disclose the communications between the ICC registry and the panel of experts assessing his fitness to stand trial. — JMA, GMA Integrated News