Duterte: Amal Clooney vs Panelo will be a ‘good match’

Human rights attorney Amal Alamuddin Clooney. AP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—President Rodrigo Duterte believes that international human-rights lawyer Amal Clooney is a “good match” of his spokesman and chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo.

“Kaya ni Panelo yan. Good match,” Duterte said Thursday when asked to comment on the addition of Clooney to the legal team of Rappler CEO Maria Ressa.

According to London-based law firm Doughty Street Chambers, Clooney and Caoilfhionn Gallagher will lead Ressa’s international legal team and work closely with her Filipino lawyers.

Ressa, who was named Time “Person of the Year” in 2018 for her journalism, and Rappler are facing several charges in what press freedom advocates have branded as “an act of persecution.”

Panelo earlier claimed Clooney was “misinformed” about Ressa’s case.

“Maybe when we meet, to use the word of the President, I can ‘educate’ her,” Panelo said in a recent Palace briefing.

The Palace official also said that he is “excited” to debate with the wife of Hollywood star George Clooney.

READ: Panelo ‘excited to debate’ with Amal Clooney

Clooney was appointed a special envoy for media freedom by the British government. She also defended two Reuters journalists jailed for more than 16 months in Myanmar and freed in May.

In 2015, she filed a case before the United Nations over the detention of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo./ac