- Duterte attended the arrest warrant for Interpol at the main airport of Manila.
- Arrest made at the request of the ICC with respect extrajudicial murders.
- The int’l body has no jurisdiction over the Philippines: the ex -jurisdiction of Duterte.
Manila: The former president of the Philippines, former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested Tuesday at the request of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that marked a key development in the investigation into thousands of alleged extrajudicial murders in a bloody “War against drugs” defined by his presidency.
The “War on Drugs” was the Duterte characteristic campaign policy that dragged the rebel mayor and destroyed the crime in 2016, fulfilling the promises he made during vitriolic speeches to kill thousands of narcotics merchants.
Duterte, 79, has repeatedly defended repression. He denies ordering the murders of drug suspects and said he instructed the police to kill only in self -defense.
However, the former president received an arrest warrant for Interpol upon arrival at the main airport of Manila and was in custody, said President Ferdinand Marcos JR in a statement.
The arrest follows years of Duterte mocking the ICC as he unilaterally withdrew the Philippines of the Court’s founding treaty in 2019 when he began investigating the accusations of extrajudicial murders systematic in his surveillance.
The Philippines refused until last year to cooperate with an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity by the ICC, who says he has jurisdiction to investigate incidents while a country is a member.
In a video posted on Instagram for his daughter Veronica Duterte of her custody at the Villamor de Manila Air Base, Duterte questioned the reason for her arrest.
“What is the law and what is the crime I committed?” He said in the video. It wasn’t clear who I was talking to.
“I was brought here not by my own volition, it is that of another person. You have to answer now for the deprivation of liberty.”
Slumland deaths
According to the police, 6,200 suspects were killed during the anti -drug operations that, they say, ended in shootings. But activists say that the real toll of repression was much greater, with thousands of Slumland drug users, many of which were included in the “official” surveillance lists, killed in mysterious circumstances.
The police denies participation in these murders and rejects accusations of systematic execution rights groups and coverings.
The media previously on Tuesday showed Duterte video images dressed in a jacket and a striped polo shirt and walking coincidentally through a corridor at the airport on their return from Hong Kong, accompanied by members of the police investigation and detection group and uniformed officers nearby.
The ally of Duterte and the former legal advisor, Salvador Panayo, said that the arrest was illegal and that the police had denied the former president legal representation.
“The CPI arrest order comes from a spurious source, the ICC, which has no jurisdiction on the Philippines,” Panayo said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch described the arrest as “a critical step for responsibility in the Philippines” and said that the authorities should quickly deliver Duterte to the ICC.
“His arrest could bring victims and their families to justice and send the clear message that no one is above the law,” he said in a statement.
