Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said the statute required the country to cooperate with the ICC prosecutor’s inquiry into the Duterte administration’s bloody war on drugs. “Neither can Duterte challenge the ICC’s jurisdiction over him by foisting the country’s sovereignty,” Lagman said in a statement. The lawmaker reminded Mr. Duterte’s spokesperson, Harry Roque, that the latter had, in fact, filed a bill invoking the country’s obligations to the ICC when he was still the Kabayan party-list lawmaker. [So] there’s no obstacle to the ICC taking jurisdiction of the case,” said Jose Manuel Diokno, convenor of the “Manlaban sa EJK” coalition and chair of the Free Legal Assistance Group. The principle of complementarity means that the ICC can only hear a case if the courts in a concerned state are unable or unwilling to act on a certain case.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer March 09, 2018 23:03 UTC