QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 11 March) — As a Mindanawon from Cagayan de Oro, I watched closely the ICC confirmation of charges hearing last February. It ran from the 23rd to the 27th of that month.

It was surreal: A former president Rodrigo Duterte faced international judges for alleged crimes against humanity. This week, on March 11, we recall his arrest and transfer to The Hague a year ago.

That was a good day for human rights, for the Philippines, and especially for Mindanao.

Accountability, however slow, has now arrived at The Hague. The confirmation hearing is not yet a full trial. Its purpose is narrower and more specific than that. Judges must find sufficient evidence to proceed further.

The legal standard is “substantial grounds to believe.” That is lower than proof beyond reasonable doubt. But it is not a rubber stamp either. The judges must be genuinely persuaded there is a case.

Having studied the record carefully, I am convinced. The prosecution has cleared that required threshold. The charges deserve to be confirmed. Let the full trial proceed.

Evidence That Speaks for the Dead

The prosecution built its case on several interlocking pillars. The most visible was a nationwide pattern of killings. Officers repeatedly reported that victims “nanlaban,” or fought back. This explanation appeared consistently across too many cities.

That consistency strained credulity as mere coincidence. In international criminal law, systematic patterns define crimes against humanity. The prosecution argued this was coordinated national policy. It was not a series of rogue individual acts.

Duterte’s own public statements formed another critical pillar. He appeared to assure officers that lethal force carried no consequences. Prosecutors highlighted specific occasions when he said this. His words created an environment where killing was normalized.

Witness testimony from former police gave those words meaning. Insiders described the internal culture of anti-drug units. They spoke of expectations officers carried into every operation. They linked ground-level actions to directives from above.

The prosecution also presented evidence of incentive structures. Some accounts described financial rewards for operations resulting in deaths. Career recognition followed lethal outcomes in certain units.

This suggests killing was actively encouraged, not merely tolerated.

Documentary evidence strengthened the overall case further. Police directives and operational guidelines were formally introduced. These materials showed the campaign was organized and supervised. It was not a collection of unplanned or freelance actions.

The geographic breadth of the killings was equally significant. Incidents were documented from Luzon to Visayas to Mindanao. That nationwide spread satisfies a key legal requirement. Crimes against humanity must be widespread or systematic in nature.

Finally, the prosecution connected events to Duterte’s Davao years. Allegations of vigilante killings preceded his national ambitions there. Death squads operated long before he became president. The argument is one of historical continuity and pattern.

Confirmation is Not Yet Conviction

The defense raised two principal lines of argument. First, it challenged the court’s jurisdiction over this case. The Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019. The defense argued the court therefore lacks authority here.

This argument has been raised before and has failed. ICC jurisdiction attached when the alleged crimes occurred. The Philippines was then still a full state party. Withdrawal cannot extinguish that jurisdiction retroactively.

The second defense argument concerned Duterte’s public statements. The defense called them political rhetoric meant to deter crime. Politicians do use hyperbole, and that is true. But the prosecution never rested on words alone.

It rested on what actually happened on the ground. Thousands of deaths, similar circumstances, consistent explanations, nationwide reach. The pattern of conduct is itself the central evidence. The statements help explain and illuminate that pattern.

The defense faces one fundamental problem above all others. Explaining the scale of killings as coincidence is impossible. Thousands of similar deaths across many regions is not accident. Defending that as isolated rogue conduct strains all reason.

Cowardly, Calculated, and Fit for Trial

Duterte chose not to appear at his own hearing. His lawyers cited health and fitness concerns throughout. But the ICC’s own medical experts found him fit to participate. He was declared capable of exercising his procedural rights.

His absence was cowardly, plain and simple. He built his career on projecting toughness and fearlessness. Yet he could not face the court he spent years mocking. That contradiction speaks for itself.

But his absence was also tactically calculated. Skipping the hearing denied the prosecution a visible target. It generated sympathy and confused the public narrative. Only a man in full command of his faculties makes that call.

His decision was therefore proof of exactly what the court found. A confused or incapacitated man does not make shrewd legal maneuvers. Duterte understood what was at stake. He chose strategy over accountability, as he always has.

Kaufman’s Failed Strategy

Nicolas Kaufman’s opening was more political than legal. He relied on personal attacks and conspiracy theories. He ignored the actual requirements of the Rome Statute. The ICC judges were trained to disregard such rhetoric.

His challenge to ICC jurisdiction was firmly rejected. The bid to delay via Duterte’s mental fitness also failed. He admitted the interim release bid was a long shot.

Kaufman played to the Duterte base, not the judges. He failed to reckon with Duterte’s vast presidential power. This was a fundamental and fatal legal error.

As one colleague in the UP Law faculty observed to me, it even seemed that Kaufman was behaving more as a lawyer of Sara Duterte and not his father Rodrigo.

The six Filipino lawyers sent by the Dutertes behaved that way too. Attorneys Medialdea, Panelo, Bello, Lim, Dulay, and Delgra sat in the gallery, not at the counsel table. They returned to The Hague offering confusion, not competence.

(Disclosure: Atty Martin Delgra and Silvestre Bello are good friends, but differ on this case and the Duterte record on human rights. While others have cut ties with people who see things differently on issues like this, I have not done so knowing that is time in the future to work together again and to repair friendships.)

Kaufman told prosecutors they were not defense team members. Yet he later said two worked with him all along. The ICC prosecutor warned this could endanger victims and witnesses. Their inconsistency drew a formal prosecution complaint.

Confirmation of course is not conviction, and that must be said clearly. A full trial will rigorously test every piece of evidence. Command responsibility is genuinely complex legal doctrine. Proving Duterte had effective control requires serious adjudication.

The judges will determine whether he ordered these crimes. Or whether he failed to prevent what he could stop. These are weighty legal questions deserving serious, careful answers. The trial is where those answers must be found.

Thank You to Butuyan and Andres

I want to pause and honor two Filipino lawyers. Joel Butuyan and Gilbert Andres represented the victims with extraordinary skill. They stood before international judges for hundreds of families. Their work was stellar, effective, and deeply Filipino.

Butuyan described the ICC case as the last boat victims could board. It was their final journey in search of justice. Without confirmation, he warned, victims would be forever stranded. Their nights would remain filled with grief and unacknowledged loss.

Andres was equally forceful in his closing statement. He urged the court to confirm all charges against Duterte. He said victims needed to be brought out of darkness into light. That light, he said, is truth and justice.

Both lawyers said in a joint statement that the hearing mattered deeply. It affirmed that the suffering of victims deserves recognition. Justice, they said, is not about vengeance. It is about truth, accountability, and never allowing such events to repeat.

May God bless them both for their courage and service. They carried the weight of hundreds of broken families. They spoke with precision, passion, and moral clarity. The victims could not have had better advocates before the world.

What This Means for Mindanao

As a Mindanawon, I see what is truly at stake. Many of the dead came from communities like ours. Davao was ground zero of Duterte EJKs for decades.

The victims were urban poor, labeled suspects without any trial. They had no lawyers, no connections, no one to speak for them.

The ICC is now speaking for them at last. That matters far beyond Duterte as an individual. It asks whether a state can kill its poor with impunity. As a Mindanawon, the answer must be no.

This proceeding is about more than one man’s fate. It is about what kind of country we want. It is about whether law protects everyone equally. For Mindanao, that question has always been personal.

[Dean Antonio Gabriel La Viña is from Cagayan de Oro and is a professor of law, philosophy, politics and governance in several universities, including in Mindanao. He has been a human rights lawyer for 36 years. He is currently the managing partner of La Viña Zarate and Associates, a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and Chair of the Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy. He is founding president of the Movement Against Disinformation and the founding chair of the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility and the Mindanao Center for Scholarships, Sports, and Spirituality.]