The former president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, known for his controversial reign, has recently been apprehended for suspected crimes against humanity related to his aggressive anti-drug campaign.
Duterte, 79, was arrested at Manila’s international airport Tuesday after arriving from Hong Kong on order of the International Criminal Court. Â
Authorities disclosed that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been probing the widespread violence that transpired during Duterte’s relentless pursuit to curb illegal drug activities in the country, as announced by President Ferdinand Marcos’ administration.
Reportedly, the ex-president was presented with an arrest warrant by the prosecutor general of the ICC upon his detention, accusing him of committing crimes against humanity. Currently, he is under the custody of the law enforcement authorities.
It is estimated that 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019 under Duterte’s clampdown on drugs, with most of the victims being young men from poor, urban areas, who were shot dead in the streets or in their homes.
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.
Footage of the arrest shows Duterte being surrounded by a crowd of people as he is is taken into police custody. Â
‘This is a violation of his constitutional right,’ Sen. Bong Go, a close Duterte ally told reporters.
The warrant of arrest sent by the ICC to Philippine officials 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 [of] 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.’
There was no immediate comment on Duterte’s arrest from the court or the ICC prosecutor’s office.
Duterte’s arrest and downfall stunned and drove families of the victims of his bloody crackdowns against illegal drugs to tears.
‘This is a big, long-awaited day for justice,’ Randy delos Santos, the uncle of a teenager killed by police during an anti-drug operation in August 2017 in the Manila metropolis, told The Associated Press.
‘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.
Three of the police officers who killed his nephew, Kian delos Santos, were convicted in 2018 for the high-profile murder, which prompted Duterte at the time to temporarily suspend his brutal anti-drugs crackdown.
The conviction was one of at least three, so far, against law enforcers involved in the anti-drugs campaign, reflecting the concerns of families of victims of suspected extrajudicial killings that they would not get justice in the Philippines, hence, their decision to seek the help of the ICC.
It was not immediately clear where Duterte was taken by the police and when he would be flown to Europe to be handed to ICC custody. The government said the 79-year-old former leader was in good health.
The ICC began investigating drug killings under Duterte from Nov. 1, 2011, when he was still mayor of the southern city of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as possible crimes against humanity.Â
In October, the former leadetold a Senate inquiry that he had maintained a ‘death squad’ of seven gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of Davao, a southern Philippine city.
‘I can make the confession now if you want,’ Duterte said. ‘I had a death squad of seven, but they were not policemen, they were also gangsters.
‘I’ll ask a gangster to kill somebody,’ Duterte said. ‘If you will not kill (that person), I will kill you now.’
When asked by senators Aquilino Pimentel III, who was overseeing the inquiry, and Risa Hontiveros, for further details of the death squad, he said he would give more information at the next hearing.
Often cursing during the inquiry, Duterte said he would take full responsibility for the killings that happened while he was president from 2016 to 2022.
But he said he never ordered his national police chiefs, who also attended the inquiry, to undertake extrajudicial killings.
Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the Rome Statute in a move human rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability.
The Duterte administration moved to suspend the global court’s investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, arguing the ICC – a court of last resort – didn’t have jurisdiction.
Appeals judges at the ICC ruled in 2023 the investigation could resume and rejected the Duterte administration’s objections.Â
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 Ferdinand Marcos Jr., 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.Â
But the Marcos administration has said it would cooperate if the ICC asks 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.
