Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on Tuesday, shortly after arriving from Hong Kong to Manila, for alleged crimes against humanity committed during his controversial war on drugs which claimed thousands of lives.
The Philippine National Police made the arrest at Manila’s international airport on orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which began investigating Duterte’s bloody crackdown on illegal drugs in 2021. The investigation covered the period from November 1, 2011, when Duterte was still the mayor of Davao, to March 16, 2019, when the ex-president, who left office in 2022, pulled the Philippines out of the Rome Statute. The move, human rights activists say, was made in an attempt to dodge accountability for the deaths, which some rights groups estimate to be in the tens of thousands.
“The former President and his entourage are in good health and have been examined by government doctors,” Manila’s Presidential Communications Office said in a statement announcing his arrest.
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