Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was sent to The Hague on Tuesday night to face the International Criminal Court (ICC), his daughter Sara Duterte, who now serves as vice president of the Philippines, said.
“Since former President Rodrigo Duterte was detained this morning, he has not been brought before any competent judicial body to defend his rights …. As I write this, he is being forcibly sent to The Hague tonight,” Sara Duterte wrote on social media.
She emphasised that Duterte’s detention is a “blatant attack on Philippine sovereignty and an insult to every citizen of the country who believes in the independence of the state.”
Sara Duterte is travelling to the Netherlands to help her father after he was arrested in Manila on an ICC warrant and taken to The Hague.
Earlier, Duterte was detained at the Manila airport. The press service of the President of the Philippines has not yet commented on the sending of R. Duterte to The Hague.
Duterte was in power in the Philippines in 2016-2022, during this time, according to the police, in operations against the drug mafia killed about 6 thousand people, many of whom became victims of extrajudicial killings. Non-governmental organisations put the death toll at 30,000. The ICC opened an investigation into Duterte but pulled the country out of the organisation in 2019.
