Former President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has been charged with three counts of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which alleges that he played a role in the murders of at least 76 people during his so-called “war on drugs”.
The charges against the 80-year-old, who has been held in a detention facility in the Netherlands since March, are set out in a document that was published by the ICC on Monday.
They relate in part to the anti-drug crackdown Duterte led when he was president, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of alleged narcotics dealers and users.
The heavily redacted ICC charge sheet, which is dated from early July and is signed by the court’s deputy prosecutor, Mame Mandiaye Niang, sets out what prosecutors see as Duterte’s individual criminal responsibility for dozens of deaths that occurred between 2013 and 2018.
The first count dates to his time as mayor of Davao City, when he is alleged to have been an “indirect co-perpetrator” in 19 murders between 2013 and 2016.
The second and third ICC charges concern his years as president. The former relates to the murders of 14 so-called “high-value” targets in 2016 and 2017, while the latter refers to 43 murders committed during “clearance” operations against lower-level alleged criminals between 2016 and 2018.
The 76 murders were carried out by police as well as non-state actors, such as hitmen, according to the ICC document.
The publication of the charges came several weeks after a court delayed Duterte’s appearance scheduled for later this month at the ICC to hear the accusations against him.
The court must first consider whether the former president is fit to stand trial, following his lawyer Nicholas Kaufman’s suggestion that the case should be indefinitely postponed because of Duterte’s poor health.
Kaufman has said that Duterte is suffering “cognitive impairment in multiple domains”.
Duterte was arrested in the Philippines’ capital, Manila, on March 11, and was swiftly flown to the Netherlands, where he has been held in ICC custody. The 80-year-old insists his arrest was unlawful.
Duterte’s supporters in the Philippines allege that his detention is political and the result of his family’s falling out with the current president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The post ICC charges ex-Philippine President Duterte with crimes against humanity appeared first on Al Jazeera.
