Rodrigo Duterte’s lawyers file petition at SC: ‘Bring him back to Manila’

A plane carrying former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte lands at an airport in Dubai on March 12, 2025. A plane carrying former Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte left the Philippine capital bound for The Hague on March 11 following his arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant stemming from his deadly crackdown on drugs, Manila said. | Photo by Giuseppe CACACE / AFP

MANILA, Philippines — Lawyers for former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who is bound for The Hague following his arrest on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant tied to his deadly crackdown on drugs, filed a petition Wednesday demanding he be sent back to Manila.

The 79-year-old faces a charge of “the crime against humanity of murder”, according to the ICC, for a crackdown that rights groups estimate killed tens of thousands of mostly poor men, often without proof they were linked to drugs.

On Wednesday morning, lawyers for the former president said they had filed a Supreme Court petition on behalf of his youngest daughter, Veronica, accusing the government of “kidnapping”, and demanding it be compelled “to bring him back”.

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The office of Vice President Sara Duterte, another daughter, issued a statement saying she had left on a morning flight for Amsterdam, without offering further details.

President Ferdinand Marcos told a press briefing Tuesday evening that the plane carrying his predecessor had departed at 11:03 pm (1503 GMT).

“The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs,” said Marcos.

AFP correspondents in Dubai saw the flight land around 4:00 am (0000 GMT).

This handout photo taken and released by the Partido Demokratiko PilipinoLakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban) on March 11, 2025, shows former Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte (C) inside the Villamor Air Base in Pasay, Metro Manila, after arriving from Hong Kong. |Photo by Handout / PARTIDO DEMOKRATIKO PILIPINOLAKAS NG BAYAN (PDP LABAN) / AFP

Duterte was arrested at Manila’s international airport Tuesday after “Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC”, the presidential palace said.

Before his departure, Vice President Duterte said her father was being “forcibly taken to The Hague”.

“This is not justice — this is oppression and persecution,” she said in a statement.

The former president, meanwhile, said he believed the Philippine Supreme Court would step in and prevent his transfer.

“The Supreme Court will not agree to that. We do not have an extradition treaty,” Duterte said on Instagram live after his lawyers filed a petition.

But no reprieve materialised.

An ICC spokesman confirmed the arrest warrant Tuesday and said an initial appearance hearing would be scheduled when Duterte was in court custody.

While supporters dubbed his arrest “unlawful”, reactions from those who opposed Duterte’s drug war were jubilant.

One group working to support mothers of those killed in the crackdown called the arrest a “very welcome development”.

“The mothers whose husbands and children were killed because of the drug war are very happy because they have been waiting for this for a very long time,” Rubilyn Litao, coordinator for Rise Up for Life and for Rights, told AFP.

Philippine rights alliance Karapatan said Duterte’s arrest was “long overdue”.

A winding path

The Philippines quit the ICC in 2019 on Duterte’s instructions, but the tribunal maintained it had jurisdiction over killings before the pullout, as well as killings in the southern city of Davao when Duterte was mayor, years before he became president.

It launched a formal inquiry in September 2021, only to suspend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.

The case resumed in July 2023 after a five-judge panel rejected the Philippines’ objection that the court lacked jurisdiction.

Since then, the Marcos government on numerous instances said it would not cooperate with the investigation, but recently reversed course, saying it would be “obliged to follow” should Interpol ask for assistance.

Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines who supported his quick-fix solutions to crime, and his family remains a potent political force.

Asked Tuesday what he would say to Duterte supporters, Marcos said the government was “just doing its job” by living up to its international commitments.

“Politics doesn’t enter into it,” he added.