Former Philippine President Duterte arrested, flown to ICC

MANILA | Xinhua |  A chartered plane transporting former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in The Netherlands took off on Tuesday night.

The aircraft RP-C5219 took off at 11:03 p.m. local time (1503 GMT), Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos confirmed in a press briefing.

On Tuesday night, Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte arrived at the Villamor Air Base in the Philippine capital but failed to see her father.

Sara Duterte earlier said in a statement that her detained father was “forcibly taken to The Hague,” hours after the former Philippine leader was detained at Manila airport after the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest related to his “war on drugs” campaign.

Sara’s younger sister, Veronica, said in a social media post that “They took my dad from us, put him on a plane, and wouldn’t say where to.”

Earlier, the Philippine Presidential Communications Office (PCO) issued a statement on Tuesday, confirming that former President Duterte was detained by police upon his return to Manila from abroad.

According to the PCO, Interpol in Manila received the official copy of the warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday morning.

The PCO said that the ICC prosecutor general served the arrest warrant to Duterte upon his arrival in Manila at around 9:20 a.m. local time through Interpol.

“Government doctors have examined the former president, and he is in good health and good condition,” the PCO statement said.

Duterte himself questioned his detention, asking in a video released by his family on social media: “What is the crime I committed? … I was brought here not on my own volition. It’s somebody else’s.”

Former chief presidential legal counsel Atty. Salvador Panelo said Tuesday the arrest of Duterte was unlawful.

“It is an illegal arrest because the ICC arrest warrant comes from a spurious source, the ICC, which has no jurisdiction over the Philippines,” Panelo said in a statement.

The Philippines officially withdrew from the ICC in 2019.

During his presidency, Duterte carried out a “war on drugs,” which garnered wide attention both domestically and internationally. ■

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