Outside the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) detention centre, where former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was taken on Wednesday, his supporters gathered, waving national flags and shouting, “Bring him back!” as he was driven through the imposing iron gates at speed.
Small-time drug dealers, users and others were killed without trial on his watch as mayor and, later, as president. The official toll stands at 6,000, though activists believe the real figure could run into the tens of thousands.
Duterte said he cracked down on drug dealers to rid the country of street crimes. However, rights groups allege that the campaign was rife with police abuse, targeting young men from the urban poor.
Duterte is the first Asian former head of state to be indicted by the ICC – and the first suspect to be flown to The Hague in three years. And his arrival comes at a pivotal moment for the International Criminal Court.
Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and deportation on Monday was the result of an unprecedented chain of events. His supporters allege that the ICC is being used as a political tool by the country’s current president, Ferdinand Marcos, who has publicly fallen out with the powerful Duterte family.
The ICC is a court of last resort designed to hold the most powerful to account when domestic courts are unable or unwilling to do so. But this case is a reminder of the extent to which it depends on state cooperation in order to fulfil its mandate – it effectively has no power to arrest people without the cooperation of the countries they are in, which is most often refused.
In the case of Duterte, chances that he would ever be prosecuted by the ICC seemed unthinkable even in 2022, when his daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, allied with Marcos to create the powerful “uniteam” that swept parliamentary elections.
Up until a few months ago, Marcos had dismissed the idea of cooperating with the ICC.
But the pace at which Duterte was served an arrest warrant and extradited shows that when political winds shift, those once considered untouchable can find themselves touching down in The Hague.
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