00:00Rodrigo Duterte's defense counsel wants ICC prosecutor Karim Khan disqualified from the
00:06crimes against humanity case against the former Philippine president for conflict of interest
00:10since Khan supposedly once represented victims of the war on drugs as a private lawyer.
00:16Duterte's defense counsel Niklas Kaufman says in a request,
00:18This request to disqualify Mr. Khan is grounded in an irreconcilable conflict of interest
00:24arising out of his former representation of victims of an alleged policy of extrajudicial
00:29drug-related killings in the Philippines and his subsequent role as chief ICC prosecutor.
00:34One of the unique features of the ICC is that the prosecutor is tasked to find both incriminating
00:39and exonerating evidence against the suspect. Kaufman adds that exculpatory evidence which
00:45would favor Duterte would go against the interest of the victims of the war on drugs,
00:49some of whom he had represented before. He also cites the ICC's rules of procedure and evidence,
00:55under which grounds to disqualify a prosecutor include involvement in his or her private
01:00capacity in any legal proceedings initiated prior to his or her involvement in the case.
01:06As declared in his CV, Khan worked as a human rights course trainer for the Commission on Human
01:11Rights in February 2018. By then, his predecessor Fatou Ben Souda had already begun a preliminary
01:17examination into the war on drugs. Khan supposedly first disclosed his past involvement with the victims on
01:23March 6, 2025, one month after he requested an arrest warrant for Duterte.
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