International Criminal Court (ICC) Senior Trial Lawyer and Prosecution lead Julian Nicholls defended the handling of a massive Philippine government and police data set during the third status conference in the crimes against humanity case against former President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday, September 16.
Nicholls told ICC Trial Chamber III that the data set contains records of killings attributed by the Philippine government and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to police operations during the period covered by the case.
“This data set provides a kind of bottom number of what the government and the Philippine National Police say are war on drugs numbers where a suspect was killed in a police operation,” Nicholls said.
According to Nicholls, the data set contains around 3,422 deaths nationwide, with the information further broken down by region.
He described the material as extremely difficult to process when it was initially received by the prosecution.
“So the data set was truly enormous and when it came it was in an absolute mess as we received it,” Nicholls said.
He explained that the records were initially unstructured and unsearchable, requiring analysts and members of the prosecution team to manually review and code the documents over several years.
“It literally took, I don't know the exact number, but thousands of actual worker hours to put this together,” Nicholls said.
Nicholls clarified, however, that the prosecution did not submit the entire data set as evidence before the Chamber. He said the evidence list contains materials connected to one or more of the 57 incidents identified in the prosecution’s trial brief, as well as records relating to key police stations and “hot spots,” particularly those relevant to the third count.
He also said the prosecution removed duplicate records, noting that approximately 10,000 documents were deduplicated from the data set.
“We've picked what we think is the most important parts of that,” Nicholls said.
On disclosure, Nicholls said the prosecution had discussed with the defense a possible inspection system under Rule 77, which would have allowed the defense to search the broader data set and retrieve relevant documents. He said the defense initially agreed to the arrangement before further discussions led to the prosecution ultimately disclosing the material.
The prosecution’s explanation came as the Chamber addressed concerns from both sides over the volume and organization of evidence ahead of Duterte’s scheduled trial.
Earlier in the conference, Duterte’s defense counsel Peter Haynes also raised concerns about the “enormous” volume of documents disclosed by the prosecution, including an evidence list containing around 15,000 items.
The third status conference is addressing witness and evidence lists, disclosure issues and other matters ahead of the trial, which is currently scheduled to begin on November 30.
Duterte attended the proceedings in person for the first time since his transfer to The Hague. He is facing crimes against humanity charges before the ICC over alleged killings linked to his anti-drug campaign during his presidency and earlier tenure as Davao City mayor.
