Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested yesterday in Manila by police acting on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant tied to his deadly war on drugs.
The 79-year-old faces a charge of “the crime against humanity of murder,” according to the ICC, for a crackdown that rights groups estimate killed tens of thousands of mostly poor men, often without proof they were linked to drugs.
As of yesterday evening he was still being held at the capital’s Villamor Air Base, according to his political party, while Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said that there were plans to swiftly transfer him to The Hague, Netherlands.
Photo: AP
“As I write this, he is being forcibly taken to The Hague tonight. This is not justice — this is oppression and persecution,” Duterte’s eldest daughter said in a statement.
The former president had earlier gone on Instagram to say he believed the Philippine Supreme Court would step in and prevent his transfer to the ICC.
“The Supreme Court will not agree to that. We do not have an extradition treaty,” he said after his lawyers filed a petition with the court.
Duterte was arrested at the airport after “Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the Philippine presidential palace said in a statement.
In an earlier video, Duterte had demanded to know the basis of his arrest.
“So what is the law and what is the crime that I committed? Show to me now the legal basis of my being here,” he said.
Duterte’s former chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, criticized his detention as “unlawful.”
“The [police] didn’t allow one of his lawyers to meet him at the airport and to question the legal basis for [the] arrest,” Panelo said.
Reactions from those who opposed Duterte’s drug war were jubilant.
One group working to support mothers of those killed in the crackdown called the arrest a “very welcome development.”
“The mothers whose husbands and children were killed because of the drug war are very happy because they have been waiting for this for a very long time,” said Rubilyn Litao, coordinator for Rise Up for Life and for Rights.
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