ICC lawyer: No basis to declare Rody mentally unfit

Detained former president Rodrigo Duterte's defense team is making a baseless claim of his "deteriorating cognitive condition" in order to secure an interim release from the International Criminal Court, an ICC-accredited lawyer said yesterday.

- By BELLA CARIASO

In an interview over radio dzMM, Joel Butuyan, president of the Center for International Law, noted that no less than Duterte's children publicly stated that the jailed ex-leader is doing well.

"For me, the heaviest evidence is the behavioral evidence of Mr. Duterte. We can see this in the statements of relatives who visited him. His children were interviewed several times. They said Mr. Duterte is OK. He even joked with them. They talked about the past, present and future. He said he has no regrets in what he did and he's willing to face whatever the consequences are," Butuyan said.

The ICC on Thursday night released the public redacted version of the defense request for the indefinite adjournment of the proceedings.

"Mr. Duterte knows what's happening and he knows what he did, so I think there's no basis in what doctors are saying that he is mentally unfit," Butuyan added.

In the request originally filed on Aug. 18, the defense claimed that Duterte “is not fit to stand trial as a result of cognitive impairment in multiple domains.”