The Senate of the Philippines was thrown into chaos Wednesday as what appeared to be gunshots were fired inside the chamber after a top ally of the country’s former leader said police were coming to arrest him.
At about 7:30 p.m. while the Senate was in session, a live broadcast from the capital, Manila, aired the sound of explosions and gunshots. It was not clear who fired the shots.
The country’s interior secretary, Jonvic Remulla, said on television that no one was injured.
Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa was the chief enforcer of a years long violent crackdown on drug dealers and users by the former president, Rodrigo Duterte. They are co-defendants in a case brought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity. Rights groups say thousands of people were killed during the crackdown. Mr. Duterte is already in detention and on trial in The Hague.
During a break in the session earlier in the afternoon, Mr. dela Rosa said in a message on Facebook that he was about to be arrested. “I have received information that after our session today, operatives of the NBI and CIDG are coming here to arrest me,” he wrote in the message. He was referring to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, a branch of the national police, and the National Bureau of Investigation.
He asked his supporters to gather at the Senate to prevent the arrest.
“I am calling on you to please help me, let us not allow them to take another Filipino to The Hague, second to president Duterte,” he wrote.
Mr. dela Rosa had been in hiding for months but emerged on Monday, when he outran agents who had tried to arrest him in the Senate building on the I.C.C. warrant. In an extraordinary scene that was captured on CCTV, he dashed up flights of stairs and through doors, stumbling at one point.
A couple of minutes later, he was in the safety of the Senate chamber, where the would-be arresting officers had no authority.
Mr. dela Rosa’s lawyers are petitioning the Supreme Court to invalidate the warrant. The I.C.C. has accused him of being responsible, along with Mr. Duterte and others, of multiple killings when he was Davao City’s police director and later chief of the Philippine National Police. He has previously denied the charges.
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