Earlier remarks made by Vice President Sara Duterte against President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. were considered by investigators as they assessed her alleged threats against the country’s top officials, a prosecution witness told the Senate impeachment court on Monday.
Lawyer Jeremy Lotoc, former chief of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Cybercrime Division, said the agency’s probe did not focus only on Duterte’s widely circulated Nov. 23, 2024 online press conference but also examined her previous public statements for context.
Lotoc said an open-source investigation led investigators to an Oct. 18, 2024 press conference uploaded through the official Facebook page of the Office of the Vice President.
During the hearing, Lotoc quoted Duterte’s statement from the earlier recording: “Gusto kong tanggalin iyong ulo niya (I want to remove his head),” which he said referred to Marcos.
He also cited another statement from Duterte saying, “I imagine myself cutting his head.”
Lotoc said investigators reviewed the video as part of their assessment of Duterte’s possible intent, motive, and capability in relation to her later remarks on Nov. 23.
The Nov. 23 statements involved Duterte saying she had spoken to a person and instructed that Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez be killed if she herself was killed.
According to Lotoc, the NBI Cybercrime Division started its investigation on Nov. 23 following the instruction of then-NBI Director Jaime Santiago.
He said the investigation followed four stages: identification and preservation of digital evidence, collection and hashing, analysis and attribution, and legal evaluation and case filing.
Lotoc said the Nov. 23 recording was livestreamed through the Facebook page of former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.
To verify the integrity of the video, investigators generated a hash value, which Lotoc described as a digital “fingerprint” or “DNA” of the file, to confirm that the evidence had not been altered.
Lotoc, who now serves as NBI regional director for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, was presented by the House prosecution panel to explain the agency’s process in examining the digital evidence and context surrounding Duterte’s statements.
The impeachment case against Duterte centers on allegations that her remarks constituted grave threats against the President and other government officials.
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