Former President Rodrigo Duterte appears before the International Criminal Court during its third status conference at the ICC headquarters in The Hague on September 16, 2026. ICC screengrab
MANILA — The International Criminal Court Trial Chamber III rejected the request of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s camp to add “expert verification” on evidence, which it said could cause “needless delay” to the start of his trial.
In a seven-page decision published September 28, the Chamber said the Defense’s requested amendment was “not merely an addition of one metadata field” but was rather intended to require “expert verification reports [to] always accompany open source and user-generated evidence submitted to the Chamber in the present case.”
“Given the large volume of evidence that has been made available by the Prosecution in the present case, as well as the breadth of open source and user-generated evidence, if implemented, may in the event be unnecessary and could well have the effect of causing a needless delay to the start of the trial,” it said.
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In August, the Defense requested an amendment to the E-Court Protocol seeking the Chamber to order the addition of an “expert verification” metadata field to NUIX that “would confirm whether or not open source and user-generated evidence will be accompanied by an expert report if it is to be submitted to the Chamber.”
NUIX is a software solution being used by the ICC for its Judicial Evidence Management (JEM).
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The Defense’s request is premised on the concerns regarding the voluminous evidence disclosed by the Prosecution which includes “many duplicates and documents of very poor quality which, notwithstanding its volume, makes meaningful review immensely challenging” and “risks flooding the record with unreliable and/or irrelevant material.”
The expert verification, the Defense argued, is “the first step to ensuring that only properly verified open-source material is submitted.”
The Chamber further noted that during the third Status Conference, it discussed with the parties and participants and issued multiple orders to address the said concerns regarding the volume of evidence.
“The purpose of the Defence’s Request will therefore be addressed through these alternative measures,” it added.
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If the defense’s request would be implemented, the Chamber explained it would require the prosecution to prepare additional materials that contain information regarding the relevance and admissibility of open-source and user-generated evidence, before the Defense could analyze evidence and raise any issues.
The Chamber argued that this runs contrary to the Directions of the Conduct of Proceedings where parties and participants are required to “raise issues as to admissibility of evidence, including on any of the standard evidentiary criteria, at the time when the evidence is submitted to the Chamber or immediately after such an issue becomes known.”
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On the other hand, the Chamber granted the Prosecution’s request to amend the E-Court Protocol for the creation of a URL metadata field in the system, which will allow the Chamber, the parties and the participants to “easily identify the URL associated with the open-source evidence at the time it was captured.”
The Prosecution noted that the Defense, the Common Legal Representative of the Victims and the Registry “do not object to the requested amendment.”
“Under these circumstances, the Chamber is satisfied that it is appropriate to grant the Request and decides to amend the E-Court Protocol as requested,” the decision read.
The Chamber also instructed the Registry to file the amended E-Court Protocol by October 2, 2026.