Morales camp claims cyber attacks after ICC submission
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 12:54 p.m.) — The camp of former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales raised alarms that they might be under cyber attack after submitting a communication against Chinese President Xi Jinping before the International Criminal Court (ICC) last March 15.
Lawyer Anne Marie Corominas, Morales' legal counsel, disclosed that they had received a new response from the ICC on their submission.
"We found out about it via email. It was a little delayed in reaching us because we have been having problems with our emails," Corominas told CNN Philippines' "The Source" Thursday morning.
Morales' legal counsel received the email dated May 20 from the ICC on May 22, a day after the former Ombudsman was denied entry to Hong Kong, presumably due to the communication filed before the ICC.
Corominas said she had received a letter from the Office of the Prosecutor, stating that the office is analyzing the allegations identified against Chinese officials in the communication.
"The purpose of the analysis is whether to see if the alleged crimes are within the jurisdiction of the court, and that if they do, then that would open a preliminary examination," Corominas said, reading an excerpt of the ICC prosecutor's response.
Corominas, who also worked under Malacañang when the Philippines' filed a United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea arbitration against China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration, bared that they had also experienced cyber attacks after filing the first South China Sea case.
"I was an assistant secretary and headed legal and international affairs during the time of President (Noynoy) Aquino in Malacañang so I was part of the first case against China and maybe it can be publicly said now but right after we filed the first case [January 2013] we were under constant cyber attack," Corominas said in the television interview.
According to Corominas, Malacañang's official email system would always crash due to cyber attacks. This occurred for a year.
Morales also claimed that she has been receiving suspicious messages, which supposedly came from her friends.
"I have become paranoid, as far as I am concerned, because sometimes I receive some messages from friends but the style of the messages would indicate that it did not come from my friend," Morales said in the same interview.
Morales' legal counsel also revealed that their phone calls were being intercepted by the Chinese.
Corominas recalled one incident when she was working under Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio while the South China Sea arbitartion was ongoing.
"I missed a phone call from Justice Carpio and what happened then was I asked, of course, the person that was in the car with me if they could hit redial... and it was a Chinese lady that was answering," Corominas said.
Morales, along with former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, submitted the communication against China's Xi in March, days before the Philippines' withdrawal from the Rome Statute took effect on March 17.
Del Rosario and Morales asked the ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to conduct a preliminary examination to "apprise itself of Chinese crimes committed not only against the Filipino people, but also against people of other nations, which crimes are already known to the international community."
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