THE International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber I has rejected a request by former president Rodrigo Duterte seeking leave to appeal the decision confirming charges of crimes against humanity related to his war on drugs.
In a decision dated May 21, the three-judge panel denied the defense’s “Request for Leave to Appeal the Decision on the Confirmation of Charges,” ruling that neither of the two proposed issues met the legal threshold for an interlocutory appeal under Article 82(1)(d) of the Rome Statute.
Duterte was committed to trial on March 23, after the chamber confirmed all charges brought by the prosecution. The defense filed an appeal on March 29, raising two issues: that the chamber erred by adopting an overly “flexible approach” to delineating the scope of the charges; and that it failed to give a reasoned evidentiary basis for confirming the charges.
The chamber, presided by Judge Iulia Antoanella Motoc, dismissed both arguments.
Regarding the first issue, the chamber said it had clearly set out the basis for defining the charges in paragraphs 17–24 of its original confirmation decision, applying settled ICC jurisprudence — particularly the Appeals Chamber’s reasoning in the Ntaganda case.
The judges noted that the charges included specific time periods, geographic locations, categories of victims and alleged perpetrator networks. The broadness of the scope “is inherent to the wide scale of criminality covered” and does not render the case undefined.
On the second claim, the judges said that confirmation proceedings do not require an exhaustive, incident-by-incident account of evidence akin to a trial judgment.
The confirmation decision, the judges noted, included dedicated sections assessing evidence and cited specific witness sources, police reports and official documents where necessary to illustrate the chamber’s reasoning.
“The defense’s submissions regarding the Second Proposed Issue mischaracterize the Confirmation Decision and amount to a mere disagreement with the manner in which the Chamber articulated its assessment of the evidence,” the ruling stated.
The chamber concluded that neither proposed issue qualified as an appealable “issue” under the Statute, making it unnecessary to address the remaining cumulative criteria for granting leave to appeal.
