FORMER Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on Wednesday declared before the House quad-committee (quad-comm) that he intends to “put away for life” former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte through the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Trillanes made his return as a resource person of mega-panel during its 12th hearing on Wednesday, Nov. 27.

During his hour-long presentation–probably the longest ever delivered in the history of the quad-comm–the former Navy lieutenant detailed Duterte’s alleged deeply-rooted links to illegal drugs, which the latter had claimed to despise with all his being.

Trillanes even suggested a new meaning to the acronym DDS, which stands for “Duterte Diehard Supporters”. “It’s Duterte Drug Syndicate (DDS) now,” he told the congrressmen.

During the interpellation of Batangas 2nd district Rep. Gerville “Jinky Bitrics” Luistro, Trillanes shared his main motivation for collating all the pieces of evidence against the ex-president.

“Now, the whole presentation I made is not to pin down Mr. Duterte for these specific crimes because I’m determined to pin him down through the ICC. And that’s all I need. It’s enough to put him away for life,” he said.

“What I presented is to shatter that false narrative that he peddled to the Filipino people na galit talaga siya sa iligal na droga,” added Trillanes.

The ICC has been looking into the alleged crimes against humanity that was committed under Duterte, particularly in his bloody war on illegal drugs wherein up to 30,000 people were reportedly slain. Most the fatalities were believed to be cases of extrajudicial killings (EJKs).

Trillanes’ presentation was mostly composed on open-sourced materials like readily-available news articles, interviews, and testimonies dating back to 2016.

A good chunk of the information presented by the Magdalo leader could be traced to the lengthy affidavit of alleged drug war hitman-turned-ICC witness Arturo Lascan̈as.

Trillanes defended his reliance on Lascan̈as’ words. “He is way up there as a credible witness, but that’s just coming from me.”

“Mr. Lascan̈as, again, as a witness, he went through the very rigorous process of being accepted as an ICC witness. He went through this weeks-long process of vetting and validation, and he checked out as the primary witness of the prosecution against Mr. Duterte,” he told Luistro.

“If these professional investigators and lawyers were able to check him out, then I would have to follow suit,” noted Trillanes.

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