Rodrigo Duterte: Filipino ex-president arrested

Former Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested for alleged crimes against humanity. Against him there was an Interpol provision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, as the presidential office of the Southeast Asian country announced. According to this, the 79-year-old was arrested by the Filipino police after his arrival from Hong Kong at the international airport in the capital Manila.

A video shown on television is said to show the moment of arrest in a plane. It is supposed to hear Duterte how he succeeds the police: “You will have to kill me.” A second video seems to show him with a walking stick at the airport in police accompaniment.

Duterte was in power from 2016 to 2022 and is mainly controversial against drug crime because of his brutally waged war. According to the police, more than 6,000 people were killed during its term in anti-drug operations. Human rights activists are convinced that the real number is much higher. Against the suspect was often not taken according to the rule of law, but they were literally executed without arrest or indictment. In 2018, the ICC took up investigations into suspected murders in the course of the state-organized anti-drug war.

Human Rights Watch welcomed Duterte’s arrest and called on the Filipino government to quickly deliver it to the ICC. “His arrest could bring the victims and their families closer to justice and sends the clear message that nobody stands above the law,” said the Vice-Asia boss of the human rights organization Bryony Lau.

Duterte’s daughter Sara is currently Vice President under his successor, the dictator son Ferdinand Marcos Jr., among other things, because of a threat to murder against the current head of state, an office procedure is running against her.