THE case filed at the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing President Rodrigo Duterte and his administration of “crimes against humanity” is nothing but the maneuvering for the political goals of former senator Antonio Trillanes 4th and the Liberal Party (LP), with the communists scrambling later to join the plot.

This is not my analysis, not my conjecture.

It is the lawyer himself, Jude Sabio, who filed the case at the ICC in April 2017; who revealed the scheme in his Jan. 12, 2020 letter to the ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, that he submitted as a sworn affidavit, attested to by a local notary public. He informed Bensouda that he was withdrawing the case he had filed against Duterte for reasons he elaborated on in his 28-page letter.

That the Reds scrambled to bolster the case with its own lies was revealed in a tweet last week by former leftist party-list representative Teodoro Casiño, reporting that the National Union of People’s Lawyers — led by Edre Olalia, communist leader Jose Ma. Sison’s personal counsel — and Communist Party-led organizations disguised as human rights groups “sent communications to the ICC.”

Trillanes, with his unfailing megalomania, claimed that Casiño was trying to grab credit from him after the ICC prosecutor announced that the accusation had not been dropped and that “preliminary examination” of the case would continue.

Despicable propaganda

That this ICC case is a plot by the power-mad Trillanes, the Yellows and the Reds is one of their most despicable propaganda projects that reveals their depravity and utter lack of patriotism in their demented obsession to oust Duterte. This episode should convince Filipinos to condemn this cabal and never let them participate in politics and the national discourse.

They are claiming to the world that Duterte’s war against illegal drugs — which has made a serious dent on this decades-long scourge — constitutes a “crime against humanity” is the genre of cases the ICC has investigated, which were horrible episodes of ethnic cleansing and tribal genocides in African nations barely out of the Stone Age such as Uganda, Congo and Sudan.

They’re not demonizing Duterte, really, to the world; they are portraying their own country as an uncivilized one where there is yet no rule of law.

C’mon guys, do you really think that Duterte’s war against illegal drugs is genocide or mass murders? After nearly four years and all-out effort by this gang, assisted by media, no proof of widespread killings of innocents in this anti-drug campaign has been established — except for a very few cases, as in the Caloocan killings, in which the police involved have been convicted and jailed.

The Cagayan de Oro-based Sabio disclosed that it was Jesuit Fr. Albert Alejo — whom he would claim was the mastermind of the fake “Bikoy: The Real Narcolist” videos, pure fiction that accused Duterte and his son of being linked with drug lords — who funded his trip in October 2016 to Manila and introduced him to Trillanes. The former senator asked him to lawyer for Edgar Matobato, who claimed to have been a member of Duterte’s Davao Death Squads when he was mayor.

For reasons Sabio has not made clear — but which I suspect was partly because of the national exposure he gets for doing so, which helps a lawyer to get clients — he agreed to file the case personally in April 2017 at the ICC headquarters in The Hague. He explained that with his help, Trillanes, Alejo — and he hinted — Sen. Leila de Lima prepared the ICC “communication.” Trillanes told him that a “prominent FLAG (Free Legal Aid Group) lawyer” was originally assigned to file the ICC case on April 24, 2017, but the latter had begged off at the last minute.

Sabio disclosed in his letter that Trillanes also asked him to lawyer for Arturo Lascanas in the murder case against him. Lascanas was a former Davao police officer who also claimed that he had been with the purported Davao Death Squad. He said it was he who worked on Lascanas’ “asylum” to Singapore.

Senate funds

He disclosed in the latter part of his letter that Trillanes gave him a “monthly allowance” of P50,000 to P100,000. This was through a consultancy fee under a different name from Trillanes’ Senate funds — that is, taxpayers’ money — until the end of Trillanes’ term in June 2019. He claimed that despite many efforts, Father Alejo refused to settle his P700,000 legal fees lawyering for Matobato and Lascanas. Trillanes himself claimed that Alejo had defrauded him of his legal fees.

Throughout the second semester of 2019, Sabio in his regular column in the Cagayan de Oro-based Mindanao Goldstar, lashed out at Trillanes and Alejo. He included three coulumns in his letter to the ICC prosecutor, which he sent in January 2020.

It was the “Totoong Narcolist” plot, that Sabio called the “Bikoy scandal,” which he claimed made him realize how rotten Trillanes and his gang were. This involved a series of videos released on YouTube in April 2019 in which a “Bikoy” claimed he worked for drug syndicates and presented alleged documents claiming bribes were paid to Duterte’s son Paulo and the President’s son-in-law Waldo Carpio.

Sabio narrated in his letter: “For about nine months starting in the year 2019, Fr. Albert Alejo, SJ took Bikoy under his employ and control. It was a conspiracy that involved nuns, bishops and priests; lawyers and officers of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines; Vice President [Maria Leonor] ‘Leni’ Robredo and high-profile opposition senatorial bets; and, most notably, Senator Trillanes, Senator de Lima and Fr. Alejo. The so- called ‘Totoong Narcolist’ videos were produced inside the Communications Center of the Ateneo de Manila University thru the active direction of Father Alejo.” Trillanes, Sabio wrote, asked him to recruit him into the conspiracy to lawyer for Bikoy, but he said he refused.

The plot flopped terribly as Bikoy — one Joemel Advincula — turned around and surrendered to the police, exposing every single detail of the plot. What apparently got Sabio’s goat was Trillanes claiming in the Senate that he did not know anything about the plot, when it was the senator who told that he had vetted Bikoy and his accusations and found them to be legitimate.

Sabio declared: “When the Bikoy scandal erupted, I became highly skeptical about Trillanes and his group. It appeared to me that he, Father Alejo, de Lima and the rest of the LP-led group would stop at nothing and had no qualms about using lies and falsehoods just to undermine, destroy and topple the Duterte administration in order to pave the way for Vice President Robredo to take over.

The Bikoy scandal proved that they are motivated by nothing but sheer politics, not justice.

I began to seriously question the legitimacy of their advocacy against extrajudicial killings in the war on drugs, which they are just using for political propaganda as part of their political agenda against President Duterte.

I denounce them for using the ICC as a tool of political propaganda.”

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