International Criminal Court prosecutors have proposed omitting 253 pieces of evidence from their extensive list of over 62,000 against former president Rodrigo Duterte, just over a month before his trial.
The move follows a petition from Duterte’s lawyer, Peter Haynes, to drastically trim the prosecution’s evidence, which allegedly bloated from 5,000 in February to 62,130, more than 320,000 pages, less than three months before his trial for crimes against humanity, scheduled for 30 November.
In a letter dated 12 October, Acting Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang submitted the panel’s updated evidence list, reorganizing it into seven categories.
The restructuring removed 253 items from the initially proposed evidence.
The prosecution suggested that the defense could further cut nearly 7,000 items from its evidence if it agrees to the prosecution's proposed agreed facts concerning a redacted collection of evidence.
The first category contains the key evidence in the case, covering materials cited in the trial brief and annexes.
The second category covers materials related to trial witnesses, followed by speeches by Duterte and alleged co-perpetrators; materials from specific collections, including Philippine National Police materials related to anti-drug operations, documents from nongovernmental organizations, and open-source materials.
The submission and its annex remain confidential as they contain sensitive information about prosecution witnesses and sources.
Previously, Haynes lamented that most of the evidence disclosed to them is “illegible” and that audiovisual materials lack transcripts and/or translations, among other issues.
He also pointed to the OTPLink created by the ICC prosecutors, allowing anyone to submit evidence or information about international crimes.
A British-Israeli lawyer questioned the more than 400,000 electronic files prosecutors received via the OTPLink in 2024 alone, which allegedly ballooned to more than 570,000 files in 2025.
He argued that the lack of an identifying tag on materials received through the OTPLink—some of them tagged as “open source—raised concerns about authenticity, since “individuals can submit to OTPLink anonymously if they wish.”
Duterte, 81, has been held in the ICC’s custody in The Hague, Netherlands, since his arrest on 11 March. He is facing three counts of crimes against humanity of murder for the killings of 78 individuals, including six children, allegedly suspected of drug dealing from 2013 to 2018, spanning his tenure as Davao mayor and as president.
It also covered the summary killings purportedly committed by the so-called Davao Death Squad, which was founded and headed by Duterte, as alleged by ICC prosecutors.
Duterte is expected to make his second personal public appearance in court at today's status conference, scheduled for 13 October.