The former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has left Manila on a plane headed to The Hague, hours after he was served with an arrest warrant from the international criminal court over the killings resulting from his “war on drugs”.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told a press conference that a plane carrying Duterte took off at 11.03pm local time on Tuesday. “The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands, allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs,” he said.
Duterte’s youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte, said on social media that the plane had been used to “kidnap” her father.
The former leader, who will turn 80 this month, is accused by ICC prosecutors of crimes against humanity over his anti-drugs crackdowns, in which as many as 30,000 people were killed. Most of the victims were men in poor, urban areas who were gunned down in the streets.
Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning at Manila’s main airport after flying back from Hong Kong. “Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement. “As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”
Video shared online had earlier showed the former leader walking with a stick and being helped to board the stairs of a plane, surrounded by security. His lawyer, Martin Delgra, told local media it was bound for The Hague, where the ICC is based, although this has not been confirmed by officials until Marcos spoke after its departure.
Marcos, who was previously allied with Duterte’s elder daughter Sara, the country’s vice-president, had in the past refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation. However, his stance shifted after the two families became embroiled in a feud.
Marcos said the arrest came at the request of the ICC. “I am confident the arrest was proper, correct and followed all necessary legal procedures,” he said after Duterte’s departure. “We did not help the International Criminal Court in any way. The arrest was made in compliance with Interpol.”
Sara Duterte said she had “no message” for her former ally. “If you are a Filipino, you will never obey the foreigners inside your own country,” she said. “I don’t have any message for [Marcos]. I don’t think there’s any point talking to a person who will allow a citizen to be turned over to foreigners.”
A video shared by the broadcaster GMA had shown the moment of arrest as Duterte was stopped onboard a plane as he arrived in Manila. “You will just have to kill me. I won’t allow you to take the side of the white foreigners,” he said in the footage.
Philippine police said 379 police personnel had been deployed to the airport and other key locations. Duterte told police after he was taken into cusody he should be put on trial in a court in the Philippines. “If I committed a sin, prosecute me in Philippine courts,” he said in a video shared on social media by a relative.
Leila de Lima, one of the fiercest critics of Duterte and the “war on drugs” who was jailed for more than six years on baseless charges under his former government, said: “Today, Duterte is being made to answer – not to me, but to the victims, to their families, to a world that refuses to forget. This is not about vengeance. This is about justice finally taking its course.”
Josalee S Deinla, the secretary general of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, which represents the victims of the war on drugs, said justice was “finally catching up” with the former leader.
Much of the day’s events were relayed on social media and Veronica Duterte posted updates throughout Tuesday. In one clip, an official said Duterte’s family could select three people to accompany him to a charter flight. “Tell where he will be brought. You son of a bitch,” a voice shouted. In another update, Veronica Duterte warned about her father’s health, posting a photograph of him resting and receiving oxygen.
Duterte’s supporters have argued that, as the Philippines withdrew from the Rome statute in 2019, the ICC no longer has jurisdiction. However, the ICC has previously said it retains jurisdiction for alleged crimes that occurred in the country before its withdrawal.
Rights groups had urged the government to swiftly surrender him to the ICC.
Duterte became president in 2016 after promising a merciless, bloody crackdown that would rid the country of drugs. On the campaign trail he once said there would be so many bodies dumped in Manila Bay that fish would grow fat from feeding on them. After taking office, he publicly stated he would kill suspected drug dealers and urged the public to kill addicts.
Since his election, between 12,000 and 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in connection with anti-drugs operations, according to data cited by the ICC.
Even as his crackdowns provoked international horror, he remained highly popular at home throughout his presidency.
Police reports often sought to justify killings, saying officers had acted in self-defence, despite witnesses stating otherwise. Rights groups documenting the crackdowns allege police routinely planted evidence, including guns, spent ammunition and drugs. An independent forensic pathologist investigating the killings has also uncovered serious irregularities in how postmortems were performed, including death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.
Duterte, who appeared before a senate inquiry into the drugs war killings in 2024, said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his policies, saying: “I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country.” During the same hearing, he told senators he had ordered officers to encourage criminals to fight back and resist arrest, so that police could then justify killing them – but also denied authorising police to kill suspects.
Duterte also told the hearing that he kept a “death squad” of criminals to kill other criminals while serving as a mayor of Davao, before becoming president.
The ICC’s investigation into the anti-drugs killings covers alleged crimes committed from November 2011 to June 2016, including extrajudicial killings in Davao City, as well as across the country during his presidency up until 16 March 2019, when the Philippines withdrew from the court.
