Philippine police today arrested former President Rodrigo Duterte in connection with the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s ongoing investigation into his violent anti-drug campaign.
In a statement, the presidential palace said that the 79-year-old was arrested this morning at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport after returning from Hong Kong.
“Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the palace said in its statement. “As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”
Duterte flew to Hong Kong on March 6, and had spent the previous few days campaigning among the city’s large overseas Filipino worker population for his senatorial slate ahead of the midterm elections in May.
The arrest followed widespread speculation that the ICC was preparing to issue an arrest warrant for Duterte, and that the Philippine National Police had put in place a plan for taking the former president into custody. In a March 8 report, Rappler cited “informed sources” as saying that the warrant had been issued by the ICC that morning and that there was what appeared to be a “consolidation of witnesses” at The Hague.
Duterte himself addressed the rumors of an arrest warrant during a campaign rally for Filipino expats in Hong Kong on Saturday, at which he said he had no regrets for his ruthless anti-narcotics campaign. “If this is truly my fate in life, it’s OK, I will accept it. They can arrest me, imprison me,” Duterte told the rally. “What is my sin? I did everything in my time for peace and a peaceful life for the Filipino people.”
Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, which began the moment that he was sworn into office in mid-2016, was modeled on the tough approach that he employed during his years as mayor of Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao. Estimates of the number killed during the anti-narcotics campaign range from 12,000 to as many as 30,000. Most were young men in congested urban areas who were shot dead during “encounters” with police, but the victims also included children and other innocents who were caught in the crossfire.
The campaign quickly caught the attention of ICC prosecutors. In 2019, they initiated a preliminary probe into the drug war killings, prompting Duterte formally to withdraw the Philippines from the court. In September 2021, judges at the ICC authorized an investigation into the anti-drug campaign, describing it as a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.” This investigation has covered killings that took place between July 1, 2016, when Duterte came to office, and March 16, 2019, when Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC. It also covers extrajudicial killings allegedly committed during Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao City between November 2011 and June 2016.
Initially after taking office, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that he had “no intention” of rejoining the ICC and made it clear that he would not cooperate with the ongoing investigation. In September 2022, the Marcos administration officially requested that the ICC halt its drug war investigation, saying that the court “has no jurisdiction over the situation in the Philippines.”
However, the political equation has changed drastically over the past 18 months due to the bitter feud between the Duterte and Marcos camps, whose “Uniteam” ticket scored a landslide victory at the 2022 presidential election. During that time, Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, has grown estranged from her former running-mate. In mid-2024, Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet and has since been investigated by the House of Representatives from her misuse of millions of dollars in public funds. Last month, she was impeached by the House for this and a host of other alleged transgressions, including corruption and a supposed threat to kill the president.
As the relationship between the two clans and their supporters has deteriorated, the Marcos camp has begun to use the “war on drugs” as a way of putting the political squeeze on Duterte. Last year, Marcos’s allies in the House of Representatives set up a special committee to look into extrajudicial killings committed during the drug war.
In his testimony to the committee, Duterte displayed the same insouciance and lack of regret that he has shown since he first promised “blood” on the presidential campaign trail in 2016. In a defiant outburst at a hearing in November, Duterte urged the ICC to start its investigation. “I am asking the ICC to hurry up, and if possible, they can come here and start the investigation tomorrow,” he told the hearing, according to Rappler. “This issue has been left hanging for many years.”
Shortly afterward, Marcos’ office issued a statement indicating that, while it would not cooperate with the ICC, it would feel obliged to arrest Duterte if it received an official “red notice” from Interpol, requesting his arrest on the ICC’s behalf.
“The government will feel obliged to consider the red notice as a request to be honored, in which case the domestic law enforcement agencies shall be bound to accord full cooperation,” the president’s Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said in the statement.
The likely impact of Duterte’s arrest will be to exacerbate the conflict between the Marcos and Duterte camps. The responses to the arrest have been predictably polarized.
Former Senator Leila de Lima, who spent nearly seven years in prison on drug charges that were concocted by the Duterte administration, said that the former leader was “being made to answer – not to me, but to the victims, to their families, to a world that refuses to forget. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice finally taking its course.”
Conversely, Salvador Panelo, who served as chief presidential legal counsel under Duterte, condemned the arrest in a statement, saying that it issued from a “spurious source” that “has no jurisdiction over the Philippines” – more or less the same position once professed by the Marcos administration. He added, “The government action will make the arresting team as well as the public officials ordering the arrest criminally liable.”
Supporters of Duterte have organized a series of large rallies as the political feud has deepened, and it would be unwise to ignore the possibility of political unrest. The Armed Forces of the Philippines announced today that it is ready “to reinforce efforts to uphold national security and stability when necessary.”
For this reason, the Marcos administration has every interest in securing Duterte’s extradition to The Hague before his supporters can mobilize and attempt to challenge the arrest in the courts. As the Philippine political observer Manolo Quezon III noted on X today, “the authorities would do best if [Duterte] were on a plane to The Hague by tonight or early tomorrow a.m. Best case for [Duterte’s] network is for the process to be dragged out giving them time to regroup and come up with a plan.”
In either event, the drama surrounding Duterte’s arrest, and his daughter’s looming impeachment trial in the Senate, now seem set to monopolize the agenda ahead of the midterm elections on May 12, with unpredictable – and possibly destabilizing – consequences.