Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on Tuesday, March 11, on his arrival in Manila from Hong Kong in connection with a case of crimes against humanity he’s facing before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
He was flown out of the country the same day on a chartered plane bound for The Hague, where he was placed in ICC custody upon arrival late in the afternoon on March 12 (past midnight on March 13 in Manila).
An ICC pre-trial chamber “found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. Duterte is individually responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crime against humanity of murder, allegedly committed in the Philippines between 1 November 2011 and 16 March 2019,” the ICC said in a statement.
“The Chamber found that there was an attack directed against a civilian population pursuant to an organisational policy while Mr Duterte was the head of the Davao Death Squad (DDS), and pursuant to a State policy while he was the President of the Philippines,” the ICC said.
Moreover, there are reasonable grounds to believe that this attack was both widespread and systematic: the alleged attack took place over a period of several years and resulted in thousands of deaths. In the arrest warrant, the Chamber focused on a sample of alleged incidents to facilitate its analysis,” the ICC added.
A hearing will be scheduled for Duterte’s initial appearance before the Court.
At past 11 a.m. on March 11, the Presidential Communications Office confirmed in a statement that Interpol Manila received an official copy of the arrest warrant from the ICC.
It said that the Prosecutor General served Duterte the ICC notification for his arrest upon his arrival at around 9:20 a.m. from China’s special administrative region. Duterte and his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, were in Hong Kong during the weekend to address a rally by Filipinos.
Duterte was placed in police custody at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He was brought to the Villamor Air Base while waiting for his chartered flight to The Hague.
Duterte and several others are facing a crimes against humanity case at the international tribunal court in The Hague over the brutal anti-drug campaign he waged as president from 2016 to 2022, and as Davao City mayor for 22 years.
The national police said that more than 6,000 were killed in the drug war but human rights groups said the death toll could go as high as 27,000.
In May 2017, lawyer Jude Jose Sabio asked the international court to charge Duterte and 11 other officials with mass murder and crimes against humanity over the thousands of extrajudicial killings in the conduct of the drug war.
Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV filed a supplemental communication asking the ICC to investigate Duterte.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has maintained that he does not recognize ICC’s jurisdiction in the Philippines, echoing assertions by Duterte and his camp. The Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute, the ICC’s legal foundation, in 2018. This took effect a year later.
In 2021, ICC opened its investigation of killings committed before the withdrawal. In January 2023, the court decided to allow the reopening of the inquiry into the war on drugs and denied the Philippines’ appeal against it.
Neri Colmenares, a lawyer who represents drug war victims in Philippine courts, had earlier explained that Duterte could face a pre-indictment warrant, “to ensure the appearance of the accused” before a trial begins. — PCIJ.org