• 12 Mar, 2025
• Fidel
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Former President Duterte Detained by ICC

The former President of the Philipinnes, Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the Philippines’ police on Tuesday, 11^th March, 2025 and flown to The Hague to face trial for charges of Crime Against Humanity.

Duterte was elected in June 2016 to serve as the 16^th President of the Philippines until 2022. During his six years in office, he launched the ‘War on Drugs’ campaign. This was part of his campaign promise to crackdown on drug dealers as claimed that drug dealing and drug addiction were major obstacles to the Philippines’ economic and social progress (Council on Foreign Relations, 2016).

He has earlier launched similar campaign when he was a mayor of one of Philippines’ biggest cities, Davao. During his inauguration as president, he was quoted to have encouraged the public to go ahead and kill drug addicts (Independent, 2016). This led to the killing of thousands of suspected drug dealers during his term in office, mostly in gun fights with police.  He encouraged the police to their job in the drug war and assured the police that “If in the process you kill 1,000 persons because you were doing your duty … I will protect you, and if they will try to impeach me, I will hurry up the process and we go out of the service together.”

On 17^th March 2018, under Duterte’s presidency, the Philippines applied to withdraw from the International Criminal Court through the United Nations, and was granted the exit on 17^th March 2019. However, on 15^th September, 2021, ICC prosecutor was authorized by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court to commence investigations of crime in Philippines from 1^st November, 2011 to 16^th March, 2019. On the basis of this investigations, the ICC confirmed an arrest warrant on Duterte (TASS News, 2025), and on 11^th March, Philippines authorities arrest him and was reported flown immediately on a private plane to the Hague to face trials.