THE defense and prosecution panels presented their closing arguments during the hearing of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to confirm charges against former president Rodrigo Duterte that he ordered the killings of thousands of civilians in carrying out his war on drugs. Nicholas Kaufman, the lead lawyer for Duterte, made the presentation for the defense, while senior trial lawyer Julian Nicholls argued the case for the prosecution. Kaufman immediately challenged the prosecution’s allegations that Duterte planned extrajudicial killings (EJKs) during his term, saying the evidence was inconsistent, unsubstantiated and failed to directly link Duterte to the EJKs. He also rejected the assertion that the term “high-value target” or HVT constituted proof of a plan to kill, saying it was merely an operational classification used in lawful anti-drug campaigns, similar to prioritization frameworks in other jurisdictions. An HVT classification, Kaufman said, did not imply unlawful intent, and many such operations ended with arrests or surrenders rather than fatalities. He said the operations were carried out within law enforcement frameworks, including police circulars, buy-bust operations and coordinated arrests. Available records, such as arrest warrants, operational reports, firearms recovery documentation, and judicial search warrants, indicated legitimate police activity, he said. Kaufman said that in multiple incidents, contemporaneous reports documented the recovery of firearms at the scene, supporting claims that gunfire was exchanged. In Incidents 12, 13 and 14, operations were conducted under judicially issued search warrants, he said. In Incidents 10, 13 and 14, gunpowder residue was found on victims’ hands, consistent with shootouts rather than executions. Incident 14, involving a police raid in Ozamiz City, demonstrated selective use of force, as four individuals were arrested alive and one was later sentenced by domestic courts that rejected claims of planted evidence. The defense said the prosecution relied heavily on testimony from individuals with alleged motives to avoid prosecution, while disregarding forensic and documentary evidence. In Incident 10, a witness admitted he did not actually see weapons being planted but only assumed it had occurred. In Incident 11, the prosecution’s alleged direct link to Duterte rested solely on a witness claiming to recognize his voice in an overheard phone call, while the alleged recipient was never interviewed, and no forensic or documentary evidence corroborated the account. Kaufman said voice recognition under uncontrolled conditions without corroboration was insufficient to establish substantial grounds for confirmation. Incidents 12 through 14 further illustrated the defense’s position. In Incident 12, the key witness was described as having personal resentment toward Duterte, while contemporaneous records showed that the operation followed a judicial search warrant and documented firearms recovery, with no evidence of fabrication. In Incident 13, involving the killings of Leyte mayor Rolando Espinosa and Raul Yap, the prosecution relied on a witness who admitted hearing but not seeing the events in question. Kaufman said the prosecution’s own evidence showed that Duterte had ordered Espinosa to surrender and later commended him. In Incident 14, involving the killing of Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog, police reports indicated that six search warrants had been issued and officers were met with gunfire, injuring one of them and prompting return fire. Gunpowder residue was found on seven individuals, including the mayor, and a paraffin test on one victim contradicted claims that firearms were planted. Kaufman emphasized that operational discretion rested with local team leaders, and that planned killings were rare and locally motivated. The term “neutralize,” he said, referred to lawful enforcement and not an execution. In Count Three, which addresses barangay clearance operations, the defense argued that routine buy-bust activities were legal enforcement operations that sometimes involved spontaneous exchanges of fire. Contemporaneous records showed operational reports, ballistics testing, gunshot residue findings, immediate hospital transport, internal investigations, and, in some cases, prosecution and conviction of officers. Kaufman further argued that many incidents involved unidentified or improperly identified victims, including those described as minors. Aside from the widely reported killing of 17-year-old Kian de Los Santos, no evidence, such as birth certificates or corroborating documentation, was presented to establish the age of other alleged child victims, he said. Nicholls argued that despite defense attempts to portray the operations as lawful or isolated, Duterte’s words, actions and the testimony of witnesses demonstrated a systematic campaign of violence, warranting a trial. He rejected the defense’s claim that the term “neutralize” was a neutral operational term, citing multiple witnesses who confirmed that, in the context of Duterte’s orders, “neutralize” meant to kill. He highlighted documents and witness statements showing that victims were marked as “neutralized” on official lists at the time of their deaths. “The facts can’t be denied,” Nicholls said, emphasizing Duterte’s long-standing leadership of death squads in Davao City and his public statements promising to kill thousands of alleged criminals. He noted that in crimes against humanity cases, senior leaders rarely leave written orders, and that this practice is common in international trials. Nicholls said the killings of Espinosa and Parojinog, where witnesses and records demonstrated that these victims were designated for “neutralization,” undermined defense claims of lawful self-defense. Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, the term “civilian population” applies to the victims targeted in Duterte’s anti-drug operations, including alleged drug dealers, pushers, users and criminals, he said. Nicholls said Duterte obstructed accountability by withdrawing the Philippines from the Rome Statute, limiting the ICC’s jurisdiction. He parried defense arguments about witnesses providing exculpatory statements, noting that these were disclosed and could still be called at trial. Nicholls emphasized Duterte’s own speeches and admissions, including a March 9 farewell address in which he alluded to orchestrating deaths for the “greater good” and expressed a desire to be commemorated with a monument holding a gun rather than a book, demonstrating his glorification of violence. He concluded by referencing a 2017 speech in which Duterte acknowledged he would eventually be held accountable for the dead. “He must answer for the dead. The victims demand it. Justice demands it. And for purposes of confirmation, the evidence demands it. We have proven it to the level for this to be bound over for trial,” he said, urging the court to allow the case to proceed. In their own closing arguments, the common legal representatives of the EJK victims appealed to the pre-trial chamber to confirm the charges against them. The arguments, delivered by lawyer Gilbert Andres, sought to rebut defense submissions and stress the human impact on victims and their communities. Andres described the defense’s arguments as an attempt to focus only on isolated parts of the case while ignoring the broader context, likening it to seeing only parts of an elephant without understanding the whole animal. He said the words and public speeches of Duterte, as head of state, carried the force of policy under Philippine law and culture, and encouraged the killings that were carried out across the country. Victims, Andres said, continue to feel the effects of these actions as their loved ones are “murdered again” by attempts to minimize the systematicity of the attacks. He noted that the anti-drug campaign disproportionately affected poor and marginalized communities. Questioning the defense’s references to Supreme Court rulings, Andres highlighted that while official reports documented nearly 4,000 deaths in anti-drug operations and over 16,000 homicide cases under investigation from 2016 to 2017, the courts found no evidence substantiating claims that these were legitimate police operations. Andres countered claims that the Duterte administration held police officers accountable, saying that only a small fraction of cases were investigated and that the majority of killings went unprosecuted.