Mass murder complaint filed against Filipino president

By Roy Ramos

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines

A Filipino lawyer has filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) a mass murder complaint against Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

The complaint was filed in connection with the killings of 1,400 people by a death squad when he was a mayor of Davao City.

Jude Sabio, the lawyer, also mentioned the death of 7,000 drug suspects since Duterte assumed as president in June, 2016.

Sabio requested the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber: “[to] commit the president and his senior government officials to the Trial Chamber for trial and that the Trial Chamber in turn, after trial, convict them and sentence them to corresponding prison sentence or life imprisonment", according to the 78-page complaint published by the New York Times.

The complainant, who addressed the complaint to Fatou Bensouda, a prosecutor at the ICC in Hague, Netherlands, said that Duterte has been committing mass murder “repeatedly, unchangingly and continuously”.

"Your favorable action on this matter would not only serve the noble ends of international criminal justice but would also be the beginning of the end of this dark, obscene, murderous, and evil era in the Philippines," Sabio told Bensouda in his cover letter.

Duterte -- who has been accused of forming the squad -- has repeatedly denied involvement in vigilantism either as mayor or president.

Since Duterte’s inauguration June 30, an anti-drug drive has seen more than 7,000 people killed over suspected drug links -- with 60 percent of the deaths attributed to “vigilante-style killings” and the remainder to police operations, according to national police data cited by Rappler.