Duterte’s new lawyer seen to focus on jurisdiction issue

Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!

Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.

Visit Suniway.ph to learn

April 10, 2025 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — The new lawyer who was confirmed to have joined the defense team of former president Rodrigo Duterte is expected to focus on issues related to the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s jurisdiction over the case.

In a message sent to The STAR, Duterte’s lead defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman highlighted the experience of French lawyer Dov Jacobs as the reason for his inclusion in their team.

“Dr. Dov Jacobs is a well-known and highly respected academic in the field of international humanitarian law,” Kaufman said.

Jacobs, an international criminal law expert and an ICC-accredited lawyer, formally joined Duterte’s defense team as associate counsel on April 3. It was confirmed in an ICC filing released on Tuesday.

While Kaufman did not disclose specific details of Jacobs’ involvement, his statement appears to indicate that the French lawyer will work on the issue involving ICC’s jurisdiction in the case.

In an earlier post on LinkedIn, Jacobs raised the matter of possible violation of Article 59 of the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, which requires an arrested individual to be presented before a “competent judicial authority.”

“The ICC has historically been reluctant to provide adequate monitoring of domestic conduct and remedies for violations of Article 59, as I experienced first-hand in the (Laurent) Gbagbo case, setting a high standard for acknowledging any abuse of process in the treatment and surrender of a person to the Court at the domestic level,” he wrote, referring to the former Ivory Coast president acquitted by the court.

“However, this will still likely be raised in the early stages of the proceedings, and rightly so,” he added.

Duterte was immediately flown to The Hague following his arrest on March 11.