Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte arrested in Manila over crimes against humanity

The surprise arrest sparked a commotion at the airport, where lawyers and aides of Duterte loudly protested that they, along with a doctor and lawyers, were prevented from coming close to him after he was taken into police custody. “This is a violation of his constitutional right,” Senator Bong Go, a close Duterte ally, told reporters.

The warrant of arrest sent by the ICC to Philippine officials, a copy of which was seen by reporters, said “there are reasonable grounds to believe that” the attack on victims “was both widespread and systematic: the attack took place over a period of several years and thousands people appear to have been killed”.

Duterte’s arrest was necessary “to ensure his appearance before the court”, according to the March 7 warrant, adding that the former president was expected to ignore a court summons. It said that although Duterte was no longer president, he “appears to continue to wield considerable power”.

“Mindful of the resultant risk of interference with the investigations and the security of witnesses and victims, the chamber is satisfied that the arrest of Mr. Duterte is necessary,” it said.

Randy delos Santos, the uncle of a teenager killed by police during an anti-drug operation in August 2017, said Duterte’s arrest marked “a big, long-awaited day for justice”.

“Now we feel that justice is rolling. We hope that top police officials and the hundreds of police officers who were involved in the illegal killings should also be placed in custody and punished,” delos Santos said.

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It was not immediately clear where Duterte was taken by the police. The government said the 79-year-old former leader was in good health and was examined by government doctors.

The ICC has been investigating drug killings under Duterte from November 1, 2011, when he was still mayor of the southern city of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as possible crimes against humanity. Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the Rome Statute in a move human-rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability over the killings.

The Duterte administration moved to suspend the court’s investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, saying the ICC – a court of last resort – did not have jurisdiction.

Appeals judges at the ICC ruled in July 2023 the investigation could resume and rejected the Duterte administration’s objections. Based in The Hague, the Netherlands, the ICC can step in when countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute suspects in the most heinous international crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

President Marcos, who succeeded Duterte in 2022 and became entangled in a bitter political dispute with the former president, has decided not to rejoin the global court. But the Marcos administration had said it would cooperate if the ICC asked international police to take Duterte into custody through a so-called Red Notice, a request for law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and temporarily arrest a crime suspect.

Salvador Panelo, who was Duterte’s legal aide and a spokesman during his 2016-2022 presidency, claimed in a statement on Tuesday that the Interpol arrest warrant had come from “a spurious source”, as the ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines.

Duterte himself questioned under what law and for what crime he had been arrested, according to a video posted by local media outlet GMA news.

“You have to answer now for the deprivation of liberty,” he said in the video that GMA said had been supplied by his youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte. It was unclear who the former president was speaking to in the video.

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Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines who supported his quick-fix solutions to crime, and he remains a potent political force. He is running to reclaim his job as mayor of his stronghold Davao in the May midterm election.

Charges have been filed locally in a handful of cases related to drug operations that led to deaths, but only nine police have been convicted for slaying alleged drug suspects.

A self-professed killer, Duterte told officers to fatally shoot narcotics suspects if their lives were at risk and insisted the crackdown saved families and prevented the Philippines from turning into a “narco-politics state”.

At the opening of a Philippine Senate investigation into the drug war in October, Duterte said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his actions.

“I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” he said.

Reporting by Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse