Sara Duterte charged over alleged Marcos death threat

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte was charged with grave threats on Tuesday over an alleged death threat against President Ferdinand Marcos, his wife and a former congressman.

Department of Justice spokesman Polo Martinez said the charge was filed in a Quezon City court. It stems from a National Bureau of Investigation criminal complaint filed in February 2025 after a late-night briefing in which Duterte claimed to have hired an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and a former congressman cousin if she were killed first.

Duterte's lawyers argued the case should not proceed while she is being tried in the Senate after her impeachment. Defence lawyer Paul Lawrence Lim said a sitting impeachable officer may not be prosecuted for an alleged offence that is also part of an impeachment case.

Martinez said the justice department believed the criminal case could proceed at the same time as the impeachment trial, adding that the matter was now before the court.

Dante Gatmaytan, a professor at the University of the Philippines College of Law, told AFP there was nothing to stop the criminal and impeachment cases from proceeding independently at this stage.

Under the Philippine legal code, a conviction for grave threats carries a jail term of between one and six months. An inciting to sedition complaint included in the original NBI complaint was dismissed.

Duterte was impeached in May on charges that also included graft and corruption. Tuesday was the 14th day of her Senate impeachment trial. A guilty verdict would remove her from office and permanently bar her from elective politics.