Preliminary investigation on Castro’s complaint vs Duterte moved to Dec. 15

MANILA, Philippines — The Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office rescheduled the preliminary investigation into the criminal complaint filed by ACT Representative France Castro against former President Rodrigo Duterte to December 15, after Duterte’s non-appearance.

READ: Rep. Castro files complaint vs ex-president Duterte over death threat  

Despite being summoned by the QC prosecutor’s office, it was Duterte’s lawyers who instead appeared during the hearing, claiming that Duterte has not yet received the subpoena nor the complaint against him.

“Preliminary investigation was rescheduled to December 15, 2:30 p.m, same venue. Respondent Duterte is ordered through the same subpoena to personally appear and file his counter-affidavit,” Castro’s camp told INQUIRER.net.

The investigation stems from a complaint of Grave Threat under Article 282 of the Revised Penal Code and Section 6 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 filed by Castro against Duterte on Oct. 24.

It cited Duterte’s pronouncements in his program, Gikan sa Masa, Para sa Masa Program at SMNI on October 11, 2023, where he shared what he told his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, about her plan to use confidential funds to revive the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. (ROTC) program.

“But your first target there, using your intelligence funds, is you, France, you communists who I want to kill. I asked her to tell them that, but she refused, saying, ‘You know Pa, if I did that, they might harass the PMTs [Philippine Military Training institutions],’” he added.

Supplemental-complaint filed by Castro

On top of the initial complaint, Castro also filed a supplemental complaint against Duterte on Monday after another statement in a November 16 episode of the same program.

In the said episode, Duterte was initially talking about the rumored impeachment plans against his daughter and then proceeded to mention Castro and her alleged links to communists.

“Kaya ikaw, France, how do you solve the problem now? Kaya ‘yun statement ko ‘yun komunista dapat patayin, kasali ka, dapat!” Duterte said.

(So, you, France, how do you solve the problem now? My statement that the communists should be killed includes you.)

Castro said, through the supplemental complaint, that Duterte’s threats should not be taken lightly.

“To reiterate, the red-taggings hurled by Respondent Duterte should not be taken lightly nor be dismissed as plain, meaningless utterance,” said Castro.

“In fact, straightforwardly addressing me by his very words, ‘Yun komunista dapat patayin, kasali ka, dapat,’ he undeterredly stated with strong conviction that, being allegedly communist, I must be killed,” she added.

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