\n A Philippine prosecutor has summoned former president Rodrigo Duterte to respond to an accusation that he threatened to kill a Filipino congresswoman.\n<\/p>\n
\n The subpoena -- dated October 27 but released to the media on Wednesday -- is part of an initial investigation into a criminal complaint filed by House of Representatives Deputy Minority Leader France Castro.\n<\/p>\n
\n Castro alleged Duterte committed the crime of \"grave threats\" under the Cybercrime Prevention Act during an October 10 interview with local broadcaster SMNI.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte gave on-air advice to his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, about how she could use intelligence and confidential funds allocated to her office and the education department, which she also heads.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Your first target with your intelligence fund is you, you France. 'Tell her, it is you communists who I want to kill,'\" Duterte said in the interview that was reshared thousands of times on Facebook. It was later deleted from SMNI's Facebook page.\n<\/p>\n
\n In her complaint, Castro said Duterte's threats were \"factually baseless and clearly malicious\", but she could not dismiss them as \"figurative, joking, or otherwise benign\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The subpoena ordered Duterte and Castro to appear at the prosecutor's office on December 4 and December 11 to present witnesses and supporting documents.\n<\/p>\n
\n The prosecutor will then decide if there is enough evidence to charge Duterte in court.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte was protected from prosecution when he was president, but now that he is an ordinary citizen he can be charged for alleged crimes committed in the Philippines.\n<\/p>\n
\n His former chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo told AFP that Duterte had been \"ignoring\" Castro's criminal complaint.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"He can waive his right to preliminary investigation if he wants,\" Panelo said, adding that Castro was only after publicity.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said Duterte's comments about Castro were not a death threat, but \"just an expression of desire\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte often threatened to kill people, including drug dealers and rights activists, when he was president from 2016 to 2022.\n<\/p>\n
\n He also frequently labelled critics as communist sympathisers -- a practice known as \"red-tagging\", which can result in the arrest, detention or even death of the person targeted.\n<\/p>\n
\n His signature policy was an anti-drug campaign that killed thousands of people and triggered an international investigation into an alleged crime against humanity.\n<\/p>\n
\n cgm\/amj\/dhw\n<\/p>\n
\n Meta<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Philippine prosecutor has summoned former president Rodrigo Duterte to respond to an accusation that he threatened to kill a Filipino congresswoman. The subpoena -- dated October 27 but released to the media on Wednesday -- is part of an initial investigation into a criminal complaint filed by House of Representatives Deputy Minority Leader France […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-124784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n