Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque on Monday cleared President Rodrigo Duterte of involvement in the Davao Death Squad.
Roque was responding to the decision of International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber to allow ICC prosecutors to probe the Duterte administration’s drug war for possible crimes against humanity.
The scope of the probe were killings that transpired from November 1, 2011 until March 6, 2019, including those killings made by Davao Death Squad when Duterte was still the mayor of Davao City before assuming presidency in June 30, 2016.
“From my own investigation, while I confirm the existence of the Davao Death Squad, I found no evidence that then Mayor Rodrigo Roa Duterte was involved,” Roque said in an ANC interview.
“I confirmed the existence of Davao Death Squad but found no evidence against the then mayor. You know, I knew about them even before and we went to the site where they allegedly buried mass bodies, we conducted a dig with Peruvian Anthropologist Jose Pablo Baraybar and we only found a skeleton of a dog,” Roque added, referring a time when he was a human rights lawyer working with the Commission on Human Rights in probing the Davao Death Squad.
Likewise, Roque stressed that the President’s repeated calls on the police to kill drug suspects and the Chief Executive’s threat of killing drug personalities should not be construed as a state policy aimed at killing civilian population, which is a crime against humanity.
“No [it was not the case] because he has clarified the statement that he will back up the police only if what they do is legal. He said it over and over again and that is why you have to construe all his statements in their totality and you can come up with a conclusion that as a lawyer, as a former prosecutor, he has warned the policemen, he will back them up but only when their acts are legal,” he said.
Roque earlier said Duterte would rather die than face ICC because courts in the Philippines are fully functioning.—AOL, GMA News
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