Only the International Criminal Court (ICC) judges can declare if former President Rodrigo Duterte cannot afford to cover his counsels’ fees, so he can avail of the court’s legal aid program, ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said.
“So, normally, there is a financial investigation about the assets and financial resources that a suspect has before deciding whether the cost of his or her defense should be taken over by the Court or not,” he said in an interview with NewsWatch Plus PH on Tuesday, March 25.
Vice President Sara Duterte earlier shared that their family is mulling the possibility of applying for the ICC’s legal aid program to cover her father’s legal fees, which could run up to millions of pesos.
The Vice President is currently in The Hague, Netherlands, to assist her father in forming his defense team for the crimes against humanity of murder charges he’s facing in the ICC for his administration’s so-called bloody war on drugs campaign.
El Abdallah said that the composition of the former president’s defense team would be based on the “evolution of the case.”
“Well, there is always one lead counsel and then the rest is defense team. There is a minimum defense team of counsel and other individuals,” he explained.
The camp of the former president has already hired British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman and is still in the process of forming the rest of the elder Duterte’s legal team.
The Vice President earlier shared that there will be a Filipino lawyer in her father’s defense team as there will be facets of the case that involve Philippine laws.
“The evolution of the defense team depends, of course, on the evolution of the case, on number of the charges, and which phase of the process we are —the pre-trial or trial level — that might affect the constitution of the defense team and the number of members,” El Abdallah added.
The former chief executive faced the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I on March 14 to officially hear the charges against him, as well as be informed of his rights under the Rome Statute.
His next hearing is set on Sept. 23 for the confirmation of charges.
