Lawyers for former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who is bound for The Hague following his arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant tied to his deadly crackdown on drugs, filed a petition Wednesday demanding he be sent back to Manila.
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.
On Wednesday morning, his lawyers said they had filed a Supreme Court petition on behalf of his youngest daughter, Veronica, accusing the government of “kidnapping”, and demanding it be compelled “to bring him back”.
“The ICC can only exercise its jurisdiction if a country’s national legal system is not functioning,” Duterte lawyer Salvador Paolo Panelo Jr. told reporters outside the court, insisting the Philippines’ judicial system was “working properly”.
But palace press officer Claire Castro said cooperating with Interpol on the case was the government’s prerogative.
“This is not just surrendering a Filipino citizen, this is surrendering a Filipino citizen who is accused of crimes against humanity specifically murder,” she said at a briefing.
At a church in the capital Wednesday, some who lost family members in the crackdown gathered to discuss the former president’s arrest.
“Duterte is fortunate, there’s due process for him. There was no due process for my son. He will be lying down on a good bed, my son is already rotting at the cemetery,” Emily Soriano said of her son Angelito at a press briefing organized by a local rights group.
“For us — the poor, the victims — we weren’t able to receive that chance (at a trial),” said Llore Pasco, whose two sons were killed in 2017.
President Ferdinand Marcos announced Duterte’s departure at a Tuesday press briefing shortly after 11 pm.
“The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs,” said Marcos.
AFP correspondents in Dubai saw the flight land around 4:00 am (0000 GMT).
ICC warrant
Duterte was arrested at Manila’s international airport Tuesday after “Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC”, the presidential palace said.
An ICC spokesman later confirmed the warrant and said an initial appearance hearing would be scheduled when Duterte was in court custody.
Before his departure, Vice President Sara Duterte said her father was being “forcibly taken to The Hague”, labelling the transfer “oppression and persecution”.
Her office issued a statement Wednesday saying she had left on a morning flight for Amsterdam, without offering further details.
The night before, the former president said he believed the Philippine Supreme Court would step in and prevent his transfer after his lawyers filed a petition.
“The Supreme Court will not agree to that. We do not have an extradition treaty,” Duterte said on Instagram live shortly before his departure.
But no reprieve materialized.
While supporters dubbed his arrest “unlawful”, 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,” Rubilyn Litao, coordinator for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, told AFP.
A winding path
The Philippines quit the ICC in 2019 on Duterte’s instructions, but the tribunal maintained it had jurisdiction over killings before the pullout, as well as killings in the southern city of Davao when Duterte was mayor, years before he became president.
It launched a formal inquiry in September 2021, only to suspend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.
The case resumed in July 2023 after a five-judge panel rejected the Philippines’ objection that the court lacked jurisdiction.
Following that decision, the Marcos government said repeatedly it would not cooperate with the investigation, but recently reversed course, saying it would be “obliged to follow” should Interpol ask for assistance.
Asked Tuesday what he would say to supporters of Duterte, who remains hugely popular, Marcos said the government was “just doing its job” by living up to its international commitments.
