MANILA, Philippines – An internal memorandum of the Department of Justice (DOJ) showed by Senator Imee Marcos in her committee hearing turns out to be “fake and manufactured” according to DOJ officials. The senator is now dismissing the document as “not material.”
During the hearing on April 3, Marcos showed a purported memorandum addressed to the prosecutor general saying that a task force was already “drafting the revised complaint for violation of Republic Act 9851…against former president Rodrigo Duterte and his accomplices.” Marcos said last week: “Kung may case buildup, may draft complaint (if there was a case buildup, a draft complaint), why did we still have to cooperate with the ICC?”
“That’s a bogus document, that’s not a real document, there’s no such document which contains exactly what is highlighted there,” said Prosecutor General Richard Fadullon on Thursday, April 10.
The purported letter sender, Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Herbert Calvin Abugan, is indeed the head of a DOJ task force reinvestigating drug war extrajudicial killings, but Fadullon said the document is “manufactured” from another letter-update to the Senate blue ribbon committee.
“It’s a manufactured document, it’s a fake,” said Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla.
Asked who her source was for the document, Marcos said: “Eh hindi naman mahalagang dokumento ‘yun, maraming nagpapadala kasi ng dokumento, kaya ko nga tinatanong kung alin ang totoo, halos lahat totoo eh…’yun nga lang nakalusot ‘yung isa, hindi ko alam, tinatanong ko nga eh.”
(That was not an important document, many people send documents that’s why I am asking which of them is true, almost all are true….it’s just that one fake slipped, I don’t know, that’s why I am asking.)
The DOJ reinvestigation task force was opened last year after the House quad committee extracted a bombshell confession from retired police colonel Royina Garma about an alleged reward system in the war on drugs.
Fadullon on Thursday said that the task force is still alive and is still investigating specific cases of killing, but not necessarily tied back to Duterte. In the ICC, the national justice system has to be looking at the “same person and same conduct” for the court to lose jurisdiction. Duterte is charged in the ICC for allegedly implementing a state-sanctioned policy of killing in the nationwide drug war and in Davao City.
“Sakop po (‘yung 2016 to 2019) pero hindi po siya aktuwal na kaso na subject noong kaso na kinakaharap ng dating pangulo….they may overlap, that’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Fadullon.
(It covers the killings from 2016 to 2019 but they are not actual cases that are the subjects of the case against the former president.)
BI denies another information
Marcos told reporters after that the fake document “is not material in any case” when most of her documents were authentic. “Pati ‘yung immigration tungkol sa ICC, pati ‘yung travel logs, wala namang maka-dispute ‘nun eh dahil galing sa Immigration din,” said Marcos.
(Even the immigration document about the ICC, even the travel logs, no one can dispute it because it’s from the Immigration.)
Marcos showed passports of foreigners whom she said were the ICC personnel who traveled to the Philippines to collect evidence.
Rappler sent those passports to the Bureau of Immigration (BI) for verification, but bureau spokesperson Dana Sandoval said: “We have not received any information that said individuals are members of the ICC.”
Asked about it, Marcos shrugged it off and said: “Hindi ko alam, depende sa BI.” (I don’t know, it depends on the BI.)
The third hearing on Thursday lasted almost six hours with a contempt citation that detained for two hours the Philippine special envoy for transnational crime Markus Lacanilao, who was on the plane to take Duterte to The Hague. Lacanilao was released on the same night because the documentation regarding his detention was not signed by Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero. – Rappler.com