The Supreme Court is on a collision course with the International Criminal Court over the dismissal of a petition to review the case of Efren Morillo, an eyewitness and survivor of the war on drugs of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who has been detained at the Scheveningen facility while awaiting trial for charges of crimes against humanity in The Hague, Netherlands.

The case of Morillo, lone survivor among five men in the August 2016 anti-drug Tokhang operations by the police in Payatas, Quezon City by playing dead, was cited by the ICC as “emblematic” of the extra judicial killings in its 2021 decision authorizing the investigation of Duterte’s war on drugs.

But in a minute resolution on June 30, the Supreme Court First Division headed by Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo dismissed Morillo’s petition for certiorari for “for failure of the petitioners to sufficiently show that any grave abuse of discretion was committed by the Office of the Ombudsman.”

The Office of the Ombudsman, then under Duterte appointee Samuel Martires, dismissed the case— filed by Morillo and the families of the four others killed during the Payatas Tokhang operations — for murder, frustrated murder, robbery, planting of evidence and grave misconduct. The four persons killed in the operations were Marcelo Daa Jr., Anthony Comendo, Jessie Cule and Rhaffy Gabo.