Philippine officials say arrested former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane and he will be turned over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
A plane carrying Duterte left Manila late Tuesday. Duterte was arrested after arriving with his family from Hong Kong at the Manila international airport Tuesday morning on a warrant from the ICC.
The global court had ordered his arrest after accusing him of crimes against humanity over a deadly anti-drug crackdown that he oversaw while in office, the Philippine government said.
Walking slowly with a cane, the 79-year-old former president turned briefly to a small group of aides and supporters, who wept as they bid him goodbye, before he was helped by an escort up the stairs into the plane.
The ICC has been investigating mass killings in crackdowns overseen by Duterte when he served as mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao and later as president.
Estimates of the death toll of the crackdown under Duterte as president vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
"Upon his arrival, the prosecutor general served the ICC notification for an arrest warrant to the former president for crime against humanity," the government said. "He's now in the custody of authorities."
The warrant of arrest sent by the ICC to Philippine officials, a copy of which was seen by The Associated Press, said "there are reasonable grounds to believe that" the attack on victims "was both widespread and systematic: the attack took place over a period of several years and thousands people appear to have been killed."
Duterte's arrest was necessary "to ensure his appearance before the court," according to the March 7 warrant, adding that the former president was expected to ignore court summons.
Although Duterte is no longer president, he "appears to continue to wield considerable power," it said. "Mindful of the resultant risk of interference with the investigations and the security of witnesses and victims, the chamber is satisfied that the arrest of Mr. Duterte is necessary."
The ICC began investigating drug killings under Duterte from Nov. 1, 2011, when he was still mayor of the southern city of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as possible crimes against humanity.
Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the Rome Statute in a move human rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability. The Duterte administration moved to suspend the global court's investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, arguing the ICC — a court of last resort — therefore didn't have jurisdiction.
Appeals judges at the ICC ruled in 2023 the investigation could resume and rejected the Duterte administration's objections.
Based in The Hague, the Netherlands, the ICC can step in when countries are unwilling or unable to prosecute suspects in the most heinous international crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who succeeded Duterte in 2022 and became entangled in a bitter political dispute with the former president, has decided not to rejoin the global court. But the Marcos administration had said it would cooperate if the ICC asked international police to take Duterte into custody through a so-called Red Notice, a request for law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and temporarily arrest a crime suspect.
