A plane carrying former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is en route from Manila to the Netherlands, where he is set to face judges at the International Criminal Tribunal over alleged crimes against humanity committed during his brutal war on drugs, which involved extrajudicial killings.
Duterte was arrested on Tuesday at Manila airport after returning from Hong Kong. He served as mayor of Davao from 2011 to 2016, during which thousands of people were reportedly killed by the notorious Davao Death Squad as part of his crackdown on drug trafficking. The practice continued during his presidency from 2016 to 2022.
Amnesty International praised the arrest as a “monumental step for justice.”
“The man who said, ‘my job is to kill’ oversaw the shooting deaths of victims – including children – as part of a deliberate, widespread, and well-organized campaign of state-sanctioned killings,” said Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said at a press conference that Interpol had requested the arrest and that the government complied.
However, his deputy, Vice President Sara Duterte—Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter—called the arrest “a blatant affront to our sovereignty and an insult to every Filipino who believes in our nation’s independence.”
“This act shows the world that this government is willing to abandon its own citizen and betray the very essence of our sovereignty and national dignity,” she wrote in a Facebook post.
Sara Duterte has been at odds with President Marcos Jr. for some time, with their feud escalating recently when she claimed she had hired an assassin to kill him if he attempted to kill her.
In 2017, OCCRP named Duterte its Corrupt Person of the Year.
