International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan has asked the ICC Appeals Chamber to reject the Philippine government’s appeal of the decision to authorize the resumption of the probe on drug war killings in the Philippines.
In the 59-page document dated April 4, Khan said the government failed to show any error in the decision and failed to identify any error that materially affected the decision.
“The Prosecution respectfully requests the Appeals Chamber to reject the Appeal and confirm the Pre-Trial Chamber’s authorization of the resumption of the Prosecution’s investigation,” Khan said.
“Instead, the Chamber reasonably and correctly considered the materials submitted by the Philippines and correctly applied the law,” he added.
Khan said that the ICC had jurisdiction over the situation because the alleged crimes were committed from November 2011 to March 2019 while the country only withdrew from the ICC in March 2019.
Philippine officials have repeatedly said that the ICC had no jurisdiction in the Philippines after the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, in March 2019.
“The Philippines, therefore, was a State Party to the Statute during the temporal scope of the authorized investigation. The Philippines’ subsequent withdrawal from the Statute thus has no effect on the previously established jurisdiction of the Court,” Khan said.
He said that state cooperation was not a legal prerequisite for the exercise of the ICC’s jurisdiction.
“Although State cooperation is fundamental to the Court’s efficient conduct of its proceedings, it is not a jurisdictional precondition that must be met for the Court to exercise its jurisdiction,” Khan said. —NB, GMA Integrated News
