Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrived at the main airport in Manila on Tuesday and signed an Interpol arrest warrant with the International Criminal Court (ICC), the government said.
The International Criminal Court said it would investigate alleged criminal offenses related to Duterte’s role in overseeing the bloody “war on drugs” that killed thousands of Filipinos.
Duterte said in Hong Kong on Monday that he would be prepared to be arrested if the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant and repeatedly defended the anti-drug crackdown. He denied ordering police to kill drug suspects unless he defended himself.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s office said it received an official copy of the arrest warrant and police served Duterte. It said in a statement that Duterte is now in custody.
Duterte’s former legal counsel Salvador Panelo said the arrest was illegal and said police would not allow one of his lawyers to meet Duterte at the airport.
Duterte’s firepower unilaterally withdrew from the Philippines from the 2019 ICC founding treaty when it began studying allegations of systemic extrajudicial killings, which the Philippines refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation until last year.
The Drug War is the Signature Movement policy that swept Duterte in 2016 as a maverick, crime-sabotage mayor, his promise in his speech to kill thousands of narcotics dealers.
According to police, 6,200 suspects were killed during the anti-drug operation, and they said they ended in a gunfight. But activists say the real damage to the crackdown is much greater, with thousands of drug users in the country’s slums being included in the official “watch list” and killed in mysterious circumstances.
Police denied participating in the killings and rejected allegations of a group of rights with systematic executions and cover-ups.
