Duterte Deserves To Be Brought To Book, But Not Like This

The former Philippine leader's arrest reveals the ICC's main flaw — at the mercy of domestic politics, it becomes a tool of opportunism, not accountability.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

The dramatic arrest and swift extradition of former Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte to The Hague on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant on charges of crimes against humanity have unleashed a predictable storm of reactions.

For families of the thousands killed in his merciless war on narcotics — both during his 2016-2022 presidency and earlier as mayor of Davao — it marks a moment of long-awaited catharsis.

Memories of the brutal extrajudicial killings, estimated by independent observers at over 30,000 during his presidential term alone, have resurfaced since his unexpected March 11 detention upon his return to Manila from a visit to Hong Kong.

For anyone needing a reminder, investigative journalist Patricia Evangelista's 2023 bestseller Some People Need Killing documents the climate of impunity in which masked killers, conducting nightly shootings across the country, could murder a man in front of his family and boldly announce: "We are Duterte."

As Philippine legal affairs commentator Michael Henry Yusingco tells me, "many Filipinos see the arrest as justice for the victims of Duterte's drug war".

At the other end of the spectrum, in Duterte's camp, stands predictable outrage — claims of betrayal by the administration of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr, arguments that the ICC lacks jurisdiction, insistence there is simply no case.

"He didn't expect the government to humiliate him," Mr Raul Lambino, a member of Duterte's legal team, says of the Marcos administration's decision to dispatch the 79-year-old former president directly to The Hague by air the same day of his arrest.

They rue the fact that the mercurial former leader, who has acknowledged using the opioid fentanyl for years to treat chronic pain, will now spend his 80th birthday on March 28 in his private cell in the ICC's detention facility in the dunes of The Hague, a former Nazi prison complex.