Tuesday on his arrival at Manila’s international airport.. His arrest came from an Interpol warrant issued by International Criminal Court (ICC).
On the heels of his return from Hong Kong, Rodrigo Duterte was taken into custody by the authorities, complying with the ICC’s wishes. The international court is gathering information as part of its investigation into his alleged crimes against humanity, which focuses on the large-scale brutalities of the war on drugs, thousands of lives lost in the Philippines.
Despite serious allegations leveled against him, Duterte has always firmly defended his anti-drug campaign. He has previously mentioned that in case the ICC would issue a warrant for his arrest, he would be willing to subject himself to it. The former president has, however, denied ever having ordered extrajudicial killings, asserting that the police were only allowed to use lethal force in self-defense.
The arrest was confirmed by the office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in a statement, wherein it also mentioned that the police had completed the service of a copy of the ICC warrant on Duterte, who was then taken into custody.
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Duterte’s former attorney, Salvador Panelo, condemned the arrest emphatically and branded it as illegal. As was reported by Reuters, Panelo also charged that police prevented one of Duterte’s lawyers from accessing him at the airport.
The former president’s legal odyssey commenced with the violent campaign on illegal drugs during his administration right from assumption to power in June 2016. In the wake of the Court’s investigation into alleged extrajudicial killings, Duterte withdrew from the ICC in 2019. Even after his presidency, the Philippines resisted cooperating with the investigation on the drug war that the ICC had undertaken.
According to official police figures, about 6,200 human beings were slaughtered in the course of Duterte’s drug war, with authorities asserting that most of the killings occurred during shootouts. Nevertheless, the truth is that human rights activists dub the toll much higher and accuse the Duterte administration of massive human rights violations and extrajudicial killings.
Now under arrest, this former leader may be tried in the ICC, a date that might spark the dawn of reckoning on human rights violations in the history of the Philippines.
