Medialdea to ICC: Duterte’s arrest is ‘pure and simple kidnapping’

Manila Bulletin

Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest is “pure and simple kidnapping,” his legal counsel and former Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said.  Medialdea made the statement during Duterte’s first appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday.  He also alleged that the ICC and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had formed an “unlikely alliance” in arresting the former president.

Transcript

00:00Two days ago, the whole world has witnessed the degrading fashion in which a former president

00:11of a sovereign country was bundled into a private aircraft and summarily transported

00:18to The Hague. To us lawyers, this would be called an extrajudicial rendition. To the

00:27less legally inclined, it was a pure and simple kidnapping. My client was denied all

00:36access to the legal recourse in the country of his citizenship, and this all in the nature

00:44of political score settling. Two troubled entities struck an unlikely alliance, an incumbent

00:53president who wished to neutralize and choke the legacy of my client and his daughter,

01:01on the other hand, and a troubled legal institution subject to delegitimization and desperate

01:09for a price cut and a legal show today, on the other hand. With this in mind, it is not

01:17surprising that my client was abducted from his country. ICC private jets do not drop

01:25out of the thin air. That jet which received my client was coordinated in advance. The

01:34UAE is not a state party to the ICC and has no obligation to cooperate with the court,

01:43yet my client sat in transit in that country for more than five hours. I invite the registry's

01:52representative to present today in court to explain to the judges exactly how they believe

01:59this transfer was anything other than a gross abuse of process. Given the precipitous arrival

02:09of my client, an elderly man with debilitating medical issues, hard of hearing, and poor of

02:17sight, he was taken to a hospital for observation. Only this morning have I met him for the first

02:26time with less than an hour to discuss legal issues. I have not been able to present him

02:37with a hard copy of the arrest warrant because we were not supplied with such. I have not even

02:45been able to explain to him what the prosecution requested when seeking the issuance of the arrest

02:51warrant. This is because the chamber only established a redacted version of the prosecution

02:58request last night. Other than to identify himself, my client is not able to contribute anything

03:06to this hearing. Most importantly, he is not able even to tell you that he has been informed

03:14of the charges as contained in the arrest warrant for a reason more pertinent to which

03:23I alluded in my written request to this honorable pretrial chamber this morning and which is

03:30confidential in nature. Accordingly, I repeat my respectful request, which was rejected this

03:38morning, to postpone the substantive aspect of this hearing to the next week when I will have

03:45the opportunity to sit with my client and to explain to him what the confirmation hearing is

03:53and what the disclosure is and how the prosecution alleges that he committed crimes. I thank the

04:00court for its attention and regret to say that I do not have instructions to continue my submission

04:07any further today. Thank you.

04:23you

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