Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is scheduled to make his first appearance before judges of the International Criminal Court on Friday, days after his stunning arrest in Manila on murder charges linked to the deadly \u201c war on drugs \u201d he oversaw while in office.
\nThe 79-year-old Duterte, the first Asian former leader arrested on an ICC warrant, will be read his rights and formally informed of the charges of crimes against humanity that the court’s prosecutors filed against him after a lengthy investigation, The Associated Press said.
\nEstimates of the death toll during Duterte\u2019s presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported up to the 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.
\nThe court will also seek to set a date for a key pre-trial hearing \u2014 likely months from now \u2014 at which judges will assess whether there is enough evidence to proceed to a full trial, which could take years. If Duterte is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
\nDuterte was arrested Tuesday amid chaotic scenes in the Philippine capital after returning from a visit to Hong Kong. He was swiftly put on a chartered jet and flown to the Netherlands. After a series of medical checks on arrival, he was taken to the court’s detention center, located behind the high brick walls of a Dutch prison complex close to the North Sea coastline.
\nProsecutors accuse him of involvement as an \u201cindirect co-perpetrator\u201d in multiple murders, amounting to a crime against humanity for allegedly overseeing killings from November 2011 until March 2019, first while he was mayor of the southern city of Davao and later as president of the Philippines.
\nDuterte will not be required to formally enter a plea at Friday’s hearing.
\nAccording to the prosecution request for his arrest, as Davao mayor Duterte issued orders to police and other \u201chitmen\u201d who formed so-called \u201cDavao Death Squads\u201d or DDS.
\nHe told them \u201cthat their mission was to kill criminals, including drug dealers, and provided clearance for specific DDS killings,\u201d prosecutors allege, adding that he recruited, paid and rewarded the killers and \u201cprovided them with the necessary weapons and resources, and promised to shield them from prosecution.\u201d
\nThe document seeking an ICC warrant for Duterte said that prosecutors built their case using evidence including witness testimony, speeches by Duterte himself, government documents and video footage.
\nHuman rights groups and victims’ families have hailed Duterte\u2019s arrest as a historic triumph against state impunity, while the former president’s supporters have slammed what they call the government\u2019s surrender of a rival to a court whose jurisdiction they dispute.
\n\u201cWe are happy and we feel relieved,\u201d said 55-year-old Melinda Abion Lafuente, mother of 22-year-old Angelo Lafuente, who she said was tortured and killed in 2016.
\n“Duterte\u2019s appearance before the ICC is a testament to the courage and determination of the victims, their families, and Filipino activists and journalists to pursue justice no matter how long it takes,\u201d said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cOther leaders facing ICC arrest warrants, like Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, should take note that even those who seem untouchable today can end up in The Hague.\u201d
\nDuterte\u2019s legal team said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.\u2019s administration should not have allowed the global court to take custody of the former leader because the Philippines is no longer a party to the ICC.
\n\u201cOur own government has surrendered a Filipino citizen \u2014 even a former president at that \u2014 to foreign powers,\u201d Vice President Sara Duterte, the ex-president\u2019s daughter and a political rival of the current president, said Tuesday before her father was flown out of Manila.
\nJudges who approved Duterte’s arrest warrant said the court has jurisdiction because the crimes alleged in the warrant were committed before Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the court in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is scheduled to make his first appearance before judges of the International Criminal Court on Friday, days after his stunning arrest in Manila on murder charges linked to the deadly \u201c war on drugs \u201d he oversaw while in office. The 79-year-old Duterte, the first Asian former leader arrested on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44631,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44629\/revisions\/44631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}