Duterte’s swift descent from Philippines’ punisher president to ICC inmate

MANILA – As former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte rallied supporters in Hong Kong on March 9, his team seemed unconcerned about rumours that the International Criminal Court (ICC) might soon issue an arrest warrant against him. 

Despite a bitter political feud with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Mr Duterte’s team believed any legal action would first take place in the Philippines, said Mr Harry Roque, Mr Duterte’s former spokesman, in a phone interview from The Hague. 

It was a fatal mistake. 

In a span of two days, Mr Duterte went from that Hong Kong rally to sitting glumly on a private jet delivering him to prosecutors at The Hague, where he faces accusations of being

responsible for the extrajudicial killing of thousands

of people from 2011 to 2019. 

“He didn’t expect the government to humiliate him,” said lawyer Raul Lambino, a member of Mr Duterte’s political party and legal team. “He has always maintained that if he’ll be imprisoned or killed, that it’ll happen in his country.”

Mr Duterte made his first appearance before the court on March 14. After confirming his identity, age and place of birth via video link, Judge Iulia Antoanella Motoc set the next hearing, which will deal with whether the case can go to a full trial, for Sept 23.

Regardless of how the case at the ICC ends, the reverberations from the arrest and extradition will not subside soon. 

The Philippines was already reeling from the impeachment of Mr Duterte’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, in February over accusations that she asked someone to kill the President.

With that fight still playing out, the nation faces midterm elections in May which could determine the outcome of the impeachment trial. 

“This is a political ploy of the Marcos regime,” Mr Roque said. “They got rid of the biggest threat to the Marcos administration, and I’m just sad that the ICC” fell for a “Marcos ploy”, he added.

Mr Marcos has pressed back on those accusations. He said the government was “just doing its job” by cooperating with Interpol, and rejected accusations that there was any political persecution. 

“The arrest we did today was in compliance with our commitments to Interpol,” Mr Marcos said on March 11. “It just so happened it came from ICC. But it’s not because it came from ICC, it’s because it came from Interpol.”

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor, in a statement on March 12, said its investigation showed there were “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Duterte bears criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of murder”.

If Mr Duterte’s family and supporters really did believe that the man known as “The Punisher” would be able to fight extradition in the Philippines, that illusion collapsed when police and an Interpol representative met the 79-year-old upon his return to Manila. 

The former president had been prepared to surrender himself “to the jurisdiction of the Philippine authorities, not the ICC”, Ms Duterte told reporters on the night of March 11, when she said she attempted to join her father at the airbase where he was detained for hours but was barred.

A last-minute appeal to the Supreme Court quickly failed. Their options dwindling, the Duterte family fought to stave off the inevitable. 

In what he characterised as deference to the Duterte family’s pleas, the police general who led the arrest, Mr Nicolas Torre, said on March 13 that the former president was given time to rest, get adequate food and receive medical attention while he conferred with lawyers.

But as the hours dragged on, Mr Torre said he felt the requests had become just another delaying tactic. 

In a video shared by another daughter of Mr Duterte, Ms Veronica Duterte, Mr Torre can be heard telling Mr Salvador Medialdea, a top former aide to the president: “We can do this the hard way. We can do this the easy way.”

The “easy way” was to pick three people to accompany Mr Duterte on the plane to The Hague, immediately. The “hard way” was left unsaid. The former president boarded the chartered Gulfstream G550 jet, first to Dubai and then The Hague.

In a Facebook video en route, he told his supporters not to worry.

His family was furious. Ms Sara Duterte called the move a “state kidnapping” and, in a March 11 statement, said the extradition was “a blatant affront to our sovereignty”. 

Yet, in retrospect, she said she may have seen it coming. 

In 2023, Mr Marcos publicly and privately rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction in the case.

In a Dec 15, 2023, letter to the Vice-President seen by Bloomberg News, Mr Marcos said he remained “steadfast in my resolve that the jurisdiction of the ICC over the Republic of Philippines after the effectivity of its withdrawal therefrom is very much in question”. 

Crucially, he added: “To this end, this government will not assist the ICC in any way, shape, or form.”

He reiterated that stance in January 2024. But a few months later, when Ms Sara Duterte was serving concurrently as education secretary, she sensed something was changing during a conversation with Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.

“I noticed that he had very vague answers” when talking about the government’s position, the Vice-President said this week.

The family started to prepare for battle, she added. But they were not ready for how quickly their plans fell apart. 

Mr Duterte still maintains a solid base of support in the Philippines,

where many citizens lauded his tough-on-crime approach to drug trafficking.

It is too soon to tell if sympathy will build for him and even help sway the elections. 

But with previous ICC cases having dragged on for years, it is suddenly possible that a man whose opponents say ruled with near impunity – and who is now the first former Asian leader to be served an ICC arrest warrant – will never set foot in the Philippines again. 

Mr Roque, the former spokesman, said the legal team’s priority will be to get provisional release and expedited procedures for the former president.

Mr Roque cited Mr Duterte’s advanced age as one reason to get him out of the ICC facility. 

“I want to move quickly because of his old age,” Mr Roque said in the interview. “I don’t think he can stay in a detention centre.” 

Before landing in the Netherlands ahead of a March 14 court appearance, Mr Duterte said in a video posted on his Facebook account that he would be taking responsibility for “whatever happened in the past”.

“This will be a long legal proceeding but I say to you, I will continue to serve my country and so be it if that’s my destiny,” Mr Duterte added. BLOOMBERG