Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will speak at Southhorn Stadium on March 9, 2025 during a Thanksgiving gathering hosted by Hong Kong-based Filipino workers for the former populist president of Hong Kong.
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Vernon Yuen/AP
MANILA, Philippines – Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an International Criminal Court order at Manila’s international airport on Tuesday.
Duterte was arrested after arriving from Hong Kong, and police took him under ICC orders. This is investigating mass murders that took place under the former president’s fatal crackdown on illegal drugs, Ferdinand Marcos’s office said in a statement.
“When he arrived, the prosecutor served as an ICC notice to the former president for an arrest warrant for a crime against humanity,” the government said. “He’s under the control of the authorities now.”
The shocking arrest caused a stir at the airport, where they, along with doctors and lawyers, yelled at him that he was prevented from coming near him after being taken to police custody. “This is a violation of his constitutional rights,” Sen. Bon Go, a close Duterte ally. He told reporters.
Duterte’s arrest and fall were shocked, and it left the families of the victims of his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs to tears.
Supporters of former President Rodrigo Duterte respond to the incident when they realized they had been arrested at the airport in Manila, Philippines on Tuesday, March 11, 2025. Aaron Fabira/AP hidden caption
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Aaron Fabira/AP
“This is a huge, long-awaited day for justice,” Randy Delos Santos, the uncle of a teenager who was killed by police during an anti-drug operation in Manila Metropolis in August 2017, told The Associated Press.
“We feel that justice is lying around now. We hope that police officers and hundreds of police officers involved in the illegal killing should also be detained and punished,” Delos Santos said.
The three police officers who killed his nephew, Chian Delos Santos, was convicted of a famous murder in 2018, urged Duterte at the time to temporarily suspend his brutal anti-drug crackdown.
The conviction has so far been one of at least three against law enforcers involved in the anti-drug campaign, and it reflects the concerns of the families of highly judged suspected victims that they are unable to obtain justice in the Philippines.
It was not immediately clear where Duterte was taken by the police. The government said the 79-year-old former leader was in good health.
The ICC began investigating drug killings as a crime against humanity from November 1, 2011 until March 16, 2019, when he was mayor of South Davao. Duterte says the Philippines was withdrawn from Roman law in 2019, with human rights activists aiming to escape accountability.
The Duterte administration suspended the World Court’s investigation in late 2021 by asserting that Philippine authorities were already considering the same claim, claiming that the ICC (the last resort court) had no jurisdiction.
The ICC’s appeal judge ruled in 2023 that the investigation could resume and reject the Duterte administration’s objection. Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the ICC can intervene when the country is reluctant to or unable to prosecute suspects for the most heinous international crimes, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took over Duterte in 2022 and got caught up in a fierce political dispute with the former president, has decided not to rejoin the World Court. However, the Marcos administration said the ICC would cooperate with the international police asking law enforcement agencies around the world to detain Duterte through law enforcement requests to find and temporarily arrest suspects.
