Duterte defense wants fewer witnesses, evidence

Former president Rodrigo Duterte attends the fourth status conference at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on Oct. 13, 2026.

International Criminal Court / Philstar.com's screenshot

MANILA, Philippines — The defense team of former president Rodrigo Duterte is not satisfied with the prosecution’s efforts to shorten its list of evidence and witnesses in his upcoming trial for crimes against humanitbefore the International Criminal Court (ICC).

During the fourth status conference on Tuesday, defense lawyer Peter Haynes pointed out that some of the prosecution witnesses may be “filtered out” from the list.

“They include people who haven’t made a witness statement, people who give precisely similar evidence to other witnesses. They include witnesses with whom the prosecution hasn’t had any contact for a long period of time and witnesses who explicitly said they want nothing further to do with the proceedings,” he said.

But the prosecution maintained that they have already made efforts to shorten the time needed for them to present their evidence.

Trial lawyer Edward Jeremy said the prosecution has reclassified some of its intended witnesses, including filing a request for admission of prior recorded testimony instead of calling them to testify in person.

“With our latest reclassifications, we’ve saved 20 hours of court time. The 193 (hours) figure is now down to 173. We will continue to look at that list,” he told the judges.

Senior trial lawyer Julian Nicholls said they also do not expect to call all of those on the list, citing previous case where he said they “ended up dropping a lot of witnesses for different reasons.”

The final number of prosecution witnesses has yet to be released. But during the case’s first status conference in May, Nicholls said as many 70 witnesses may be presented against the former president during his trial.

These include 31 insider witnesses, 17 crime-base witnesses and 12 witnesses “who are relevant to explain the background and the contextual elements of the crimes charged.”

The prosecutor also intends to call 25 to 30 of these witnesses to give viva voce or verbal testimony during the trial.

Aside from the issue of witnesses, the parties also discussed the defense’s complaints over what it described as a “sheer volume of material” disclosed by the prosecution.

Duterte’s camp is asking the judges to order the prosecution to open a new case file to limit the number of disclosed items to just 10,000.

The trial chamber has yet to issue a written decision on the request, although presiding judge Joanna Korner noted during the hearing that imposing a cap could result in the prosecution violating its disclosure obligations. Duterte’s trial is expected to begin on Nov. 30.