Ex-Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte arrested in Manila for alleged crimes against humanity
Video obtained by GMA News in the Philippines showed the defiant Duterte speaking with arresting officers who had boarded his plane after it landed at Manila.
“You will just have to kill me,” Duterte said. “I will not allow it, you would be allies with the whites [Westerners].
“What is the law, and what is the crime that I committed,” he asked.
“Show me the legal basis for my being here. I was brought here not of my own volition, it was somebody else’s.”
Later, his youngest daughter posted a video to Instagram of her father sitting on a throne-like chair inside Manila’s Villamor Airbase.
Supporters of former president Rodrigo Duterte gather outside Villamor Airbase, where Duterte was taken following his arrest on an ICC warrant.Credit: Getty Images
His lawyer said the arrest was unlawful, in part because the ICC no longer had jurisdiction in the Philippines. The court, however, believes it has jurisdiction for the years the nation was party to the statute.
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Duterte’s arrest further stokes the incendiary political atmosphere in the Philippines heading into the May midterm elections.
Marcos Jr came to power with Duterte’s daughter Sara Duterte as his running mate, the pairing uniting the Philippines’ most powerful political families. In November last year, Marcos Jr said the country would not cooperate with the ICC investigation unless Duterte himself requested it do so.
But the relationship between Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte was crashing spectacularly. Later in November, she sensationally said she had contracted an assassin to kill the president and others if she was killed herself, remarks for which she was impeached by the lower house. The senate will preside over her trial this year.
The fate of her father following the arrest remains unclear.
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“As we speak, we’re looking at whether the Philippine government will seamlessly hand over Rodrigo Duterte to Interpol and eventually the ICC, or whether he will be allowed back into the country officially and fully [to] challenge this at the Supreme Court and other relevant institutions,” author and academic Richard Heydarian said.
“We’re in the midst of this big logistical battlefield whereby on one hand, those who support ICC want this to be seamlessly handled … while supporters [of Duterte] want him to get out and essentially be the lightning rod for the opposition.”
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