The Philippine Supreme Court docket had entry to a whole bunch of gigabytes value of police recordsdata and had near 10 years look at them
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Rodrigo Duterte’s lead protection counsel Nicholas Kaufman introduced police studies on the ultimate day of the pre-trial proceedings on Friday, February 27, to spice up his case that the victims who have been killed in the course of the drug conflict resisted with a gun and compelled cops to shoot again in self-defense.
“Throughout the Depend 2 incidents, there exist contemporaneous paperwork, whether or not or not it’s arrest warrants, operational information, or firearms restoration studies, all of which replicate reputable police operations that escalated into exchanges of gunfire,” stated Kaufman, referring to the rely masking killings of high-value targets.
Kaufman stated the identical about Depend 3 incidents, or these killed underneath the identify of Oplan TokHang. Basically, Kaufman introduced to the Worldwide Prison Court docket the official Duterte authorities line of “nanlaban” or preventing again.
The prosecution’s trial lawyer, Julian Nicholls, instantly disputed the reliability of these police studies when it was his flip to ship closing statements.
“He talked about police studies and that there needs to be a presumption of regularity. You must settle for these at face worth…. As we’ve acknowledged in our temporary, at trial, we’ll present, by witness testimony, that these statements, these police studies, have been typically falsified,” stated Nicholls.
Kaufman stated “as a fundamental precept…a state doc with the suitable stamps and signatures and what have you ever, is prima facie dependable, or in different phrases, it carries a presumption of administrative regularity.”
The Philippine Supreme Court docket had entry to a whole bunch of gigabytes value of police recordsdata, and it has had near 10 years to find out whether or not these studies have been common or not. However save for a mini-resolution in 2018 that pronounced the potential for “state-sponsored killings,” the Excessive Court docket had not acted decisively. Kaufman managed to make use of the indecision to spice up Duterte’s protection.
In one of many filings to the Supreme Court docket, one of many petitioners, the Free Authorized Help Group, supplied proof that police studies have been merely copy-pasted to the extent that suspects who fought again stated the identical phrase earlier than resisting.
Investigation by impartial teams
Apart from studies of human rights organizations and journalists, the United Nations Workplace of the Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights stated in 2020 that paperwork counsel law enforcement officials planted proof in crime scenes, which they then mirrored again in these disputed police studies.
Kaufman, in his opening assertion, accused journalists and the entire of civil society of colluding. Requested why he at all times hit the media in his displays, Kaufman later stated in an opportunity interview: “Why does the media at all times criticize my consumer? Full cease. Finish of story. Subsequent query.”
“In case you didn’t know any higher, wow, that’s a compelling argument, however that is the problem to anyone who watches this: they should contextualize Kaufman’s claims. As a result of we all know that these police studies in the course of the drug conflict can’t be trusted totally,” stated Carlos Conde, who investigated drug conflict killings in his time as Philippine researcher of the Human Rights Watch. Conde adopted the hearings from contained in the gallery of the Worldwide Prison Court docket.
Kaufman additionally repeated all through the hearings that the identical proof incriminating to Duterte additionally exculpates or absolves him, corresponding to authorities circulars that instruct state brokers to observe the regulation. Nicholls stated it isn’t the primary time in a world legal trial that suspects confirmed proof of their authorized orders.
“Mr. Kaufman will know this, as a result of we each labored collectively on the ICTY (Worldwide Prison Tribunal for the previous Yugoslavia), in the course of the trials for Srebrenica and the opposite Bosnian Serb military crimes, each single order that turned out to be legal, just about each single order…from Common [Ratko] Mladic down the chain — respect the Geneva Conventions, deal with prisoners of conflict correctly, deal with civilians correctly in accord with the Geneva Conventions. That was in just about each order, and it didn’t imply something,” stated Nicholls.
“That was solely to construct a veneer of legality, to create an impression of legality, and to provide his attorneys one thing to say when today got here. And that’s precisely what has occurred,” stated Nicholls.
– Rappler.com
