VICE President Sara Duterte said the defense team of her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, never reached out to Australia to host his interim release following reports that the Australian government has turned him down.
“This has never been discussed with the Australian government. There was never an application with the Australian government, and there is no intent as well to apply for interim release with the Australian government,” Duterte said in a press briefing in Davao City on Friday after the oath-taking of city officials there.
Earlier press reports said the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) declined to host the elder Duterte if the International Criminal Court (ICC) granted his request for interim release to a third country.
The former president is jailed at The Hague in the Netherlands, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs.
Duterte said that she got hold of a copy of the email from a media liaison of the DFAT saying that while the Australian government is aware that the former president has applied for an interim release to a third country, and that Australia has not agreed to host him or even consider such a move.
She said her father’s defense team never reached out to the Australian government to discuss the interim release, and that it was wrong to assume that they applied to every country that was being considered for the interim release.
She also stressed that Australia was not one of the two countries that were indicated as “redacted,” or unidentified, that are willing to host the former president if he is granted interim release.
The vice president also hit the government’s decision to support the drug war witnesses against her father.
“You have the money and the airplane to haul witnesses going to The Hague, but you don’t have the money or the airplane to haul Filipinos back from the Middle East?” Duterte said in Filipino.
She reiterated that since the country has withdrawn from the ICC, it is not anymore obliged to cooperate anymore, calling the move to cooperate with the court another of Marcos’ “scams.”
Duterte also called Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla “intellectually challenged” for allowing the ICC to take over the investigation of the drug war from the government.
“Why don’t you investigate and pursue the cases? You will just give it to a foreign jurisdiction? It’s insulting to Filipinos, especially to our judges,” Duterte said.
