The International Criminal Court indicts Duterte for crimes against humanity.

BarcelonaThe International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on three counts of crimes against humanity. It says he was involved in the murder of at least 76 people in the context of his bloody war on drugs, in a trial that was scheduled to begin this Tuesday but has been postponed. "Duterte is individually criminally responsible" for dozens of murders as an "indirect co-perpetrator," the ICC states in a charge sheet drafted in July but published Monday night, according to Efe.

Duterte is being held in a prison in The Hague. since March, when he was handed over by the Philippine government to his former political ally and now rival Ferdinand Marcos Junior. The ICC ordered the arrest of the former Philippine president, accusing him of crimes against humanity in the context of the war on drugs, which during his term (2016-2022) left 6,000 deaths according to the police and some 30,000 according to NGOs.

The first charge against the 80-year-old president is having ordered the deaths of 19 people between 2013 and 2016, when he was still mayor of Davao City, according to the court's prosecutor, Mame Mandiaye Niang. In this southern city, Duterte put his war on drugs, which propelled him to the presidency, to the test, where he enforced it with an iron fist from 2016 to 2022. "During his term as mayor, Duterte [...] used Davao City police and other hitmen to kill" city "officials" who were collaborators of the former president, although he does not mention their names.

The other two charges against Duterte relate to the murders of 57 people that occurred during his presidential term, which began in 2016 and continued until the president withdrew from the Rome Statute in 2019, thus leaving him outside the Rome Statute. About a third of these deaths were classified by the ICC as "high-value" targets, some of whom appeared on a list that offered monetary incentives to the police officers responsible for their deaths. "Duterte and his co-authors shared a common plan or agreement for neutralize the alleged offenders in the Philippines [...] through violent crimes, including murder," the ICC text says.

Upon being arrested at a Philippine airport in March and taken to The Hague, Duterte called the detention a "kidnapping" and claimed, through the "attacked".