International Criminal Court pretrial chamber evaluates evidence against Rodrigo Duterte following four day hearing

The ICC pretrial chamber is deliberating on whether to confirm charges against Rodrigo Duterte after a four day hearing regarding drug war deaths.

By: AXL Media

Published: Mar 3, 2026, 3:42 AM EST

Source: The information in this article was sourced from Inquirer

Defense characterizes drug war fatalities as minimal

During the third day of proceedings, defense attorney Nicholas Kaufman argued that the prosecution's depiction of the drug war as a program of extrajudicial killings was an unfair representation. Kaufman presented a pie graph to the pretrial chamber illustrating that only 3 percent of police drug operations resulted in fatalities. The defense maintains that the number of deaths, cited by Kaufman as 5,281 between July 2016 and February 2019, is statistically inconsequential relative to the total scale of law enforcement activity conducted during that period.

Disputed figures and allegations of underreporting

The statistical basis of the defense's argument remains a point of significant contention between the parties. While the defense relied on figures from the first half of the presidential term, official government data suggests at least 6,000 people were killed by police throughout the entire term ending in 2022. Conversely, human rights organizations have estimated the actual death toll exceeds 30,000. These groups allege that the lower official figures are the result of documented instances of underreporting and the systematic falsification of death certificates to obscure the nature of the killings.

Prosecution details the Davao model of state violence

Prosecutor Robynne Croft argued that the drug war was not a series of isolated incidents but a structured policy rooted in what she termed the Davao model of vigilante and state-sponsored murders. The prosecution contends that the evidence establishes reasonable grounds to believe that murder and attempted murder were carried out as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population. According to Paolina Massidda of the Office of the Public Counsel for Victims, these operations frequently targeted the most vulnerable segments of society, including the youth and the impoverished.