Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on Tuesday in response to a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity, allegedly committed during his brutal war against drug dealers.
The mercurial Duterte said he was not worried about the possibility of arrest on Sunday, while he was giving a speech in Hong Kong.
Duterte almost seemed to welcome the opportunity to clear up the charges against him, but he also suggested it would be outrageous for the ICC to arrest a 79-year-old man with health problems for actions he took years ago as president. He also took exception to rumors that he would remain in Hong Kong to avoid being arrested.
“What was my sin? I did everything in my time so Filipinos can have a little peace and tranquility,” he said in Hong Kong on Sunday.
“If this is my fate in life, it’s OK, I’ll accept it. I can’t do anything if I get arrested and jailed,” he complained. He then jokingly invited his audience to donate money for a commemorative statue of him brandishing a gun.
Duterte was in Hong Kong with his daughter Sara, the sitting – but impeached – vice president of the Philippines, to address a rally of Filipino expatriates for their political party. Sara Duterte was elected vice president as a member of President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.’s party in 2022, but she quit the party in May 2023 as her relationship with Marcos Jr. soured. She was impeached in February 2025 for publicly threatening to have President Marcos killed.
Despite his protestations of old age and infirmity, Rodrigo Duterte is planning to run for mayor of his hometown Davao in the May midterm elections. Duterte began his political career as vice-mayor, and later mayor, of Davao.
Upon returning to Manila on Tuesday, the elder Duterte was detained on a warrant from the ICC for thousands of killings that took place during his decade-long crackdown on drugs, which began in 2011 when he was mayor of Davao and continued through his election as president in 2016.
The ICC announced it would investigate Duterte in 2018. Duterte refused to cooperate with the probe, threatened to arrest ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda if she set foot on Filipino soil, and then withdrew the Philippines from the ICC treaty in 2019, marking only the second time a member nation has resigned from the international court. The first was Burundi in 2017.
Bensouda suspended her investigation in 2021 at the request of the Philippine government, but then resumed in 2023 after the ICC rejected Manila’s appeal. Duterte’s administration had argued that Bensouda’s investigation was “in violation of due process and the presumption of innocence expressly guaranteed by the Philippine Constitution.”
“You do not scare me that you will jail me in the International Criminal Court. I will never allow myself to answer these whites. I will never, never, never answer any question coming from you. It’s bullshit to me. I am only responsible to the Filipino,” Duterte railed in 2019 after withdrawing from the ICC.
According to Filipino news outlet ABS-CBN, the ICC wrote a sealed arrest warrant for Duterte on March 7. The ICC has only issued about 40 warrants since it was established in 2002, and they are rarely directed against heads of state. Aside from Duterte, the most famous example of the court ordering the arrest of a national leader is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been wanted in connection with the kidnapping of Ukrainian children since March 2023.
The copy of the warrant published by ABS-CBN charged Duterte with crimes against humanity for thousands of killings during his drug war, including those committed by his “Davao Death Squad,” also known as the DDS or “Lambada Boys,” a group of police officers and/or hired gangsters Duterte created when he was mayor of Davao.
Duterte has publicly admitted to creating the Davao Death Squad and has even boasted about its exploits, although he has been inconsistent about whether the squad included police officers or just hired guns. In October 2024, he told a Philippine Senate inquiry that the Death Squad consisted of seven “gangsters” under the “command” of former police officials. He said he instructed the squad to “encourage criminals to fight back, and when they fought back, kill them so my problems in the city will be solved.”
The ICC warrant accused Duterte of ordering a “widespread and systemic attack directed against the civilian population,” including incidents of “torture and rape.” The warrant dismissed some of the charges made by ICC prosecutors on the grounds of having insufficient evidence, but it held Duterte responsible for dozens of documented killings, using his own public statements to assert that he was fully aware of the extrajudicial murders committed under his orders.
The warrant rejected arguments made by Duterte’s legal team that the ICC no longer has the power to investigate or prosecute Duterte because he withdrew from the court in 2019, pointing out that the ICC treaty stipulates investigations in progress at the time of a member nation’s withdrawal would not be automatically canceled or nullified.
The warrant said the extraordinary step of arresting Duterte was necessary because he “appears to continue to wield considerable power,” creating a “risk of interference with the investigation and the security of witnesses and victims.”
Filipino political scientist Richard Heydarian told the BBC on Tuesday that swiftly arresting Duterte in Manila, using a secret warrant, was necessary to prevent Duterte’s supporters from going “berserk in terms of public rallies” and using “delaying tactics” to “drag things on until the warrant of arrest loses momentum.”
Current president Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has thus far refused to rejoin the ICC, although he became significantly more willing to cooperate with the investigation of Duterte as his political alliance with the Duterte family disintegrated.
Duterte left office in 2022 with sky-high approval ratings, including strong support for his drug crackdown, so uniting the Marcos and Duterte dynasties in a political alliance was the surest path for Marcos, Jr. to win the presidency, even though he was an outspoken critic of many of Duterte’s policies, especially his obsequious behavior toward China.
Sara Duterte on Tuesday denounced the arrest of her father and blasted Marcos, Jr. for allowing it.
“This is a blatant affront to our sovereignty and an insult to every Filipino who believes in our nation’s independence,” she said.
“Worse, former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte is being denied his fundamental rights. Since he was taken this morning, he has not been brought before any competent judicial authority to assert his rights and to allow him to avail of reliefs provided by law,” she said.
“This is not justice. This is oppression and persecution,” she concluded.
According to Sara and her sister Veronica Duterte, their father was “forcibly taken” onto a plane and whisked off to The Hague to stand trial, “without considering his health conditions.”
A crowd of restless Duterte supporters gathered around the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila as news of Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest spread across the country.
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