MANILA, Philippines — A Filipino-American businesswoman said there was “absolutely no truth” to President Rodrigo Duterte’s claims she had a hand in the decision of the International Criminal Court to begin examining crimes against humanity allegations against him.
In an open letter to Duterte, Loida Nicolas Lewis said: “There is absolutely no truth to the story given to you by ‘another country’, that I was in any way involved in the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to investigate the Extra Judicial Killings in the Philippines.”
Lewis was reacting to Duterte’s claim he knew in advance of the ICC prosecutor’s intention to open a preliminary examination into the charges he ordered hundreds of extrajudicial killings through a recorded phone conversion supposedly handed him “by another country.”
“I was already listening to the tapes of their conversation. It was provided by me by another country but the conversation was somewhere Philippines and New York. Loida was one of them. And there was this, ‘See you in the headquarters when the case is filed,’” Duterte said in a speech over the weekend.
But Lewis, in the letter she posted on social media, said “any supposed transcript of a recent phone conversation is bogus.”
She also called Duterte’s “headquarters” reference “laughable,” pointing out that the US Pinoys for Good Governance group she belongs to “does NOT even have a headquarters! We use the internet for communications and teleconference.”
The only time she said she may have mentioned a headquarters in connection with their activities “was in 2013, when the USPGG organized a rally in front of the U.N. Headquarters to show our support for the Philippine delegation who filed the case against China — which the Philippines won on July 12, 2016.”
“However, I do believe that murder without due process of our fellow Filipinos on suspicion of drug dealing is reprehensible, and goes against the laws of both God and man,” she added.
LOIDA NICOLAS LEWIS’ OPEN LETTER TO DUTERTE: