\n Philippine lawyer Jude Sabio felt it was his duty to bring President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs to the attention of international war crimes prosecutors, but now that a probe into the killings is under way, he fears he too has become a target.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sabio, who describes himself as penniless and on the run, said he had received death threats from Duterte supporters on social media after filing a petition with the Hague-based International Criminal Court in April last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I'm in a state of constant paranoia because I fear for my life,\" Sabio, 51, told AFP in an interview. \"It could be very possible that a bullet will hit me.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda launched a \"preliminary examination\" after receiving Sabio's petition, which alleges around 8,000 extrajudicial killings, and this could lead to a full investigation by the court.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sabio wants the president arrested.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte won a landslide victory in 2016 elections largely on a pledge to eradicate drugs. He is accused of stoking the killings with inflammatory statements and repeated promises to pardon any police officer charged with murder.\n<\/p>\n
\n Police say they have killed 4,021 drug suspects in self-defence, but rights groups claim police and shadowy vigilantes have actually killed more than 12,000 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n Duterte maintains he is beyond the ICC's jurisdiction and has threatened to withdraw his country from the treaty that created it if the tribunal pursues a formal investigation.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The problem with me is when I see something wrong I fight,\" said Sabio, who had a low-key legal practice for two decades and unsuccessfully ran for public office twice.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Now to the question of how it feels to be standing against Goliath, to me the fact that he is president, I'm sorry to say this, doesn't matter to me.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Treacherous -\n<\/p>\n
\n The unassuming lawyer -- the son of public school teachers of modest means -- lost the 2010 election for mayor of a southern town and was disqualified for being a \"nuisance\" senatorial candidate in 2016, officially ruled as lacking funds to run his campaign.\n<\/p>\n
\n But his life started to change course when in October 2016 he agreed to represent Edgar Matobato, a self-confessed assassin whose deposition forms part of the ICC case.\n<\/p>\n
\n Matobato had spectacularly confessed at a Senate public hearing a month earlier that he was a member of the \"Davao Death Squad\" that killed at least a thousand people on Duterte's orders when the president was mayor of Davao city.\n<\/p>\n
\n The lawyer alleged in the suit that the drug war was the \"Davao Death Squad\" on a national scale, which Duterte rejects.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"It is targeting a vulnerable civilian population, composed mostly of the poor living in depressed communities,\" Sabio said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The only way to stop the killings is to issue a warrant of arrest. Arrest president Duterte and bring him to The Hague.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n Sabio, a short, stocky man with an unruly moustache, has feared for his life ever since and he left his southern home city of Cagayan de Oro for his own safety a year ago -- the last time he saw his 75-year-old mother.\n<\/p>\n
\n His assassins could be \"riding in tandem\" he said, referring to gunmen on motorcycles, said by witnesses to be behind many of the unsolved street murders of known small-time drug dealers.\n<\/p>\n
\n Responding to questions about the threat against Sabio, Duterte's spokesman Harry Roque said Tuesday the president bore no \"ill will\" against the lawyer.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Let's make sure that if there's a threat, he should report it to the police,\" Roque told reporters.\n<\/p>\n
\n However, Sabio hit back Friday, saying \"these people are treacherous\".\n<\/p>\n
\n He said he does not know Duterte personally and denied working for the opposition, taking on the case purely on principle.\n<\/p>\n
\n But Sabio does not look like a crusader and is battling myriad health problems including diabetes and heart disease -- twice going under the knife, the last in mid-2016, to insert six stents for clogged blood vessels.\n<\/p>\n
\n He still owes the hospital 900,000 pesos (more than $17,000), and when he flew to the Netherlands to file the case \"I had no money so people contributed for my plane ticket, and also for my hotel\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Since leaving Cagayan de Oro, he has missed doctors' appointments as well as meetings with other clients.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"I could have died in that operation,\" Sabio said. \"But I don't know, I was brought to life and maybe this is my mission in life.\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippine lawyer Jude Sabio felt it was his duty to bring President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs to the attention of international war crimes prosecutors, but now that a probe into the killings is under way, he fears he too has become a target. Sabio, who describes himself as penniless and on the run, […]<\/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-36469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n