BENAR NEWS
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is in custody after authorities in his home country arrested him on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court as part of a years-long investigation into his past administration’s bloody crackdown on illegal drugs.
Here’s what you need to know about the ICC arrest order against Duterte.
What are the potential charges against Duterte?
As detailed in the ICC warrant, the former leader stands accused of committing crimes against humanity in connection with thousands of killings that occurred during a counter-narcotics crackdown under his watch as president (2016-22) and dating back to 2011, when he served as mayor of southern Davao city.
Human Rights Watch and other rights advocacy group have said that the police under Duterte had regularly falsified evidence to justify the killings of suspected drug dealers and addicts.
The Philippine government has given conflicting figures on how many people were killed in his administration’s so-called drug war. The last figure it gave was 6,252 suspects, who were killed from July 1, 2016 to May 31, 2022.
Rights groups, however, have put the death toll as high as 20,000-plus. They have noted that statistics for many of those who were killed had been placed into the government’s “death under investigation” category, and were therefore not logged as fatalities of Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign.
What evidence is there that Philippine police used excessive force?
Evidence has been piling up. Eight police officers have so far been convicted of murder carried out in the name of the drug war.
In June 2024, a court four officers for the September 2016 killing of Luis Bonifacio, 45, and his 19-year-old son, Gabriel, inside their home. The court had said the victims’ injuries – including multiple gunshot wounds to their bodies – “glaringly show the brutality employed upon them, despite the pleading for mercy of the victims.”
In November 2018, a court in northern Manila convicted three police officers for killing 17-year-old teenager Kian Loyd delos Santos while he begged for mercy. It was not a shootout as police had claimed, and evidence later showed that he was also mistakenly killed.
His death galvanized opposition to Duterte’s drug war.
In March 2023, another policeman was found guilty of torturing two teenagers who were later found dead.
Duterte has made no effort to hide his “kill, kill, kill” order, and during his appearance before Congress in October, doubled down on his reason for doing so.
“If you think you will be killed, shoot him in the head. That would be one less criminal,” Duterte had said. He also admitted to the existence of his own private army,..
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