Manila (TDI): The Philippines’ firebrand former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on Tuesday at the request of the International Criminal Court (ICC) marking a major development in the investigations concerning thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings in a bloody “war on drugs” that defined his presidency.
The “war on drugs” was Duterte’s signature campaign policy that swept the maverick, crime-busting mayor to power in 2016, delivering on promises he made during vitriolic speeches to kill thousands of narcotics dealers.
Duterte has repeatedly defended the policy. He denies ordering the killings of drug suspects and said he instructed police to kill only in self-defence.
However, the ex-president was served an Interpol arrest warrant on his arrival at Manila’s main airport and arrested, the office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said in a statement.
The arrest follows years of Duterte taunting the ICC since he unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the court’s founding treaty in 2019 as it started looking into accusations of systematic extrajudicial killings on his watch.
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The Philippines had until 2024 refused to cooperate with a probe into alleged crimes against humanity by the ICC, which says it has jurisdiction to investigate incidents while a country is a member.
In a footage shared on Instagram by daughter Veronica Duterte from his jail at Manila’s Villamor Air Base, Duterte questioned the reason for his custody.
He said in the video, “What is the law and what is the crime that I committed?”.
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According to police, 6,200 suspects were murdered during anti-drug operations that they say ended in shootouts.
But activists say the real toll of the crackdown was far high, with thousands of slumland drug users, many of whom were included on official “watch lists”, killed in mysterious circumstances.
