Former President Rodrigo Duterte’s lead counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, dismissed allegations of internal discord within the defense team and declined to comment on reports that Duterte’s common-law wife, Honeylet Avanceña, was barred from visiting him at the ICC detention center.
“For judicial reasons and out of respect for family privacy, I am not going to comment on the veracity of Honeylet Avanceña’s allegations concerning her presence not being desired at the ICC detention centre,” he said in a transcript of an interview posted on Facebook.
In an interview with pro-Duterte blogger Alvin & Tourism on Friday, Aug. 1, Kaufman shrugged off Avanceña’s supposed claims that he was not personally engaging with Duterte.
“There are absolutely no internal disagreements among the persons responsible for handling the former President’s defence,” the lawyer said, stressing that Vice President Sara Duterte “is fully qualified to judge the quality of my engagement with and work for the former President.”
He further claimed Avanceña appeared “emotionally distressed” and was “making all sorts of wild allegations which are being stoked by others.”
Kaufman also downplayed the role of former presidential spokesman Harry Roque—who had engaged in a tense exchange with him in recent days—as “an irrelevancy.”
“My only regret is that I am being forced to spend far too much time having to deal with his comical intrigues,” Kaufman said.
Various social media reports quoted Roque saying that Avanceña had been barred from visiting Duterte at the Scheveningen Prison in The Hague, Netherlands, where he has been held since his arrest and extradition in March.
Roque claimed her scheduled visit last week was canceled without explanation. (Raymund Antonio)
