ICC rejects Duterte camp bid to cap evidence at 10,000 items

Former president Rodrigo Duterte attends the fourth status conference at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on Oct. 13, 2026.

International Criminal Court / Philstar.com's screenshot

MANILA, Philippines — The International Criminal Court (ICC) has rejected former president Rodrigo Duterte’s defense team’s request to limit the prosecution’s evidence to 10,000 items in his crimes against humanity of murder case over killings linked to his administration’s anti-drug campaign.

Duterte attended the fourth status conference on Tuesday, October 13, as the ICC Trial Chamber III denied the defense’s request for the prosecution to refile its evidence in a new case file in the Judicial Workflow Platform (JWP), the court’s digital system for managing case records and evidence.

“Your motion that the evidence should be refiled in JWP and the prosecution limited to 10,000 documents is at the moment refused,” Korner said.

Korner said the proposed new case file and evidence cap could violate the prosecution’s disclosure obligations. She advised prosecutors to identify exculpatory evidence and urged Duterte’s lead counsel, Peter Haynes, to provide search terms to help locate materials relevant to the defense.

Haynes said he and prosecutor Julian Nicholls had maintained regular communication and cooperation in handling the case.

Nicholls, however, said prosecutors had asked the defense for search terms but had yet to receive them.

He proposed appointing an independent expert to review the evidence and suggested that both sides agree on documents confirming deaths during police operations to establish the number of killings reflected in the dataset without examining every document.

Evidence dispute

In a motion filed in September, Duterte’s defense team asked the ICC to cap the prosecution’s evidence at 10,000 items, arguing that the volume of materials disclosed ahead of trial would hamper its preparation.

The defense said the prosecution’s evidence had grown from 5,275 items during the confirmation phase to 62,130 items. It also cited more than 320,000 pages of documents and 1,000 audio-visual materials.

The status conference came after the ICC ruled that Duterte was fit to stand trial. The tribunal’s decision, made public on October 8, cleared the way for the proceedings to begin as scheduled on November 30.

Duterte faces three counts of crimes against humanity involving alleged murders and attempted murders committed in the Philippines between November 2011 and March 2019, according to the charges filed by prosecutors.

The case stems from the ICC’s investigation into alleged crimes against humanity linked to killings during Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

Duterte was arrested in Manila in March 2025 and surrendered to the ICC on March 12, 2025. He remains detained at the ICC Detention Centre in Scheveningen, The Hague, Netherlands.