Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrested for crimes against humanity

BarcelonaFormer Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, accused of crimes against humanity, has been arrested by police upon arrival at Manila's international airport. He was wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for repeatedly violating human rights with extrajudicial executions during his "war on drugs."

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said Tuesday afternoon that Duterte was being flown to The Hague, where the ICC is based. He said the government had responded to the arrest warrant issued by Interpol and said the operation to arrest him had followed "all necessary legal procedures."

Lformer president Duterte He forged a long political career with an aggressive and populist speech and a tough policy against crime, which earned him the nickname Harry the Brut, in reference to the character played by Clint Eastwood, a policeman who took the law into his own hands. Duterte justified indiscriminate killings against the population in the name of the fight against drug trafficking, which is widespread in the country. Several international organizations warned that the president used this pretext to persecute opposition voices.

"Early Tuesday, the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) in Manila received the official copy of the arrest warrant," reports the executive of the Asian archipelago. "The former president and his team are in good health and are being examined by a government doctor," continues the text, picked up by the Philippine news agency PNA. The authorities assure that the Philippine police officers who executed the arrest warrant were equipped with body cameras to guarantee the transparency of the operation. Duterte had landed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila shortly after nine in the morning local time. At the time, the country's attorney general had served notice of the court and national security forces had escorted him out of the airport. Minutes before his arrest, as he got off the plane, the politician had said: "They will have to kill me first."

His rise to the presidency in 2016 was marked by the promise to eradicate drugs within six months and, once in power, he ordered the police and encouraged citizens to kill anyone who might be a drug dealer, user or addict. By the end of his term in 2022, according to the police, some 6,000 people had been killed, but local NGOs put the figure at more than 30,000 dead.

Duterte tried to evade the ICC investigation Philippines withdrawing from the international body in 2019 and trying to suspend the investigation in 2021, arguing that the Philippine authorities were already investigating the same allegations and that therefore the ICC, as the court of last resort, had no jurisdiction. These attempts were of no use as the investigation was resumed in 2023.

A long history of human rights violations

His crimes were not limited only to his presidency, but already during his time as mayor of Davao City, admit to having killed with his own handssuspected criminals to teach police officers how to act. During his 22 years at the head of local government, he encouraged the creation of death squads tasked with eliminating suspected criminals.

Duterte was also criticized for the imprisonment of journalists and political opponents such as the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, and for his sexist comments and accusations of sexual abuse. Particularly notorious was the case of kiss on the mouth that Duterte gave to a Filipino woman from the audience at an event in South Korea. At another point, in a speech, he recalled confessing to a priest that he put his hand in a domestic worker's underwear while she was sleeping. "I lifted the sheet... I tried to touch what was inside the underwear," he said. In the same speech, he said that he later tried to harass her again.