MANILA— The prosecution of former President Rodrigo Duterte before the International Criminal Court (ICC) plans to present five witnesses in 2026, with the individuals expected to testify unless unforeseen circumstances arise, a prosecutor told the court.

ICC Prosecutor and Senior Trial Lawyer Julian Nicholls disclosed the plan during the fourth status conference in Duterte’s crimes against humanity case, identifying the witnesses through the code numbers 1302, 1100, 1400, 1263 and 0009.

“[J]ust depending on some logistics, the second and third witnesses, we might have to swap them; I don’t think so, but those are the five that we planned for this year,” Nicholls said.

He added that the prosecution selected the five witnesses based on the expected duration of the hearings.

“Not knowing the exact sitting schedule when we put this together, how many hours or days, but this seems like an appropriate amount that we think would fill that time,” he said.

Nicholls also presented figures from a dataset reviewed by prosecution analysts covering deaths during police anti-drug operations and deaths under investigation linked to the administration’s war on drugs.

The analysts counted approximately 3,400 drug personalities killed during anti-illegal narcotics operations from July 2016 to November 2017, he said.

He compared the findings with figures in a 2017 accomplishment report from the then Presidential Communications Operations Office, which recorded thousands of deaths during the same period.

“So here, the President, through the Communications Office, is listing as one of the accomplishments this number of persons who died from July 1 through November 17. That is the same time period for the dataset that we have gone through page by page and counted up,” he said.

“So, we’ve counted up 3,422 deaths. Our proposed agreed facts are 3,400 deaths. And the President’s administration, for the same time period, says 3,697 [SIC] deaths. So, this shouldn’t be difficult to come to an agreement on,” he added.

Defense lead counsel Peter Haynes called for a lawyer-led review of the documents, alleging that the prosecution had used artificial intelligence to summarize the material.

Haynes noted that the dataset contained thousands of items and that reviewing them had previously required another institution substantial resources and a year of work.

Nicholls rejected the defense’s assertion, maintaining that analysts and some lawyers had manually examined the documents page by page.

Meanwhile, ICC Trial Chamber III plans to begin the trial with a reduced schedule during its first week, with hearings running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The court said breaks would be provided to accommodate Duterte’s needs and the availability of witnesses.

The ICC is scheduled to open Duterte’s trial on Nov. 30, 2026.

(PNA)