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rodrigo duterte
ICC Charges Ex-Philippines President and Trump Darling Duterte With Drug War Murders
Human rights groups say that as many as 30,000 Filipinos were killed during Duterte's death squad campaign, which was hailed as a success by US President Donald Trump.
Sep 23, 2025
The International Criminal Court on Monday charged former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte with the crime against humanity of murder for having presided over the extrajudicial execution of drug dealers—killings that drew praise from US President Donald Trump.
In a 15-page charge sheet, ICC prosecutors accused Duterte of "indirect co-perpetration" of murder both during his 2016-22 presidency and previous tenure as mayor of Davao.
ICC prosecutors said that "Duterte and his co-perpetrators shared a common plan or agreement to ‘neutralize’ alleged criminals in the Philippines"—including drug producers, sellers, and users—"thrdough violent crimes including murder," often committed by death squads.
Deputy ICC Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang charged Duterte with three counts:
- Murder as a crime against humanity for the killing of 19 victims in 2013-16 when he was mayor of Davao;
- Murder as a crime against humanity for the killing of 14 so-called "high-value targets" in 2016-17 when he was president; and
- Murder and attempted murder as crimes against humanity, involving 45 victims—43 of them murdered—during so-called "clearance" operations in 2016-18.
Filipino government data indicate that at least 6,252 people were killed during police operations between July 1, 2016, and May 31, 2022. However, human rights groups estimate that as many as 30,000 people were extrajudicially murdered during that period.
Advocates sought more charges against Duterte, with victim's attorney Kristina Conti lamenting that the prosecution's narrower scope "does not show the full extent" of the ex-president's crimes.
"This is an obvious shortcoming of the legal process that is dispiriting for the thousands of victims of killings, illegal arrests and detentions, trumped-up charges, unlawful house raids, and other rights violations and abuses," the National Union of People's Lawyers and Rise Up for Life and for Rights said in a joint statement Tuesday.
"Proceeding with a smaller section of crimes against Duterte may be a strategy for the prosecution, but it is a disservice to the victims of the mass murders, and his other crimes as well," the groups added.
Duterte was arrested in March by Filipino police and Interpol agents acting on an ICC warrant. Since then, he has been jailed by the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands.
The ICC must now decide whether Duterte is fit to stand trial. His lawyers argue that the 80-year-old suffers “cognitive impairment in multiple domains" and that his health is "progressively deteriorating."
Conti told Rappler—which was targeted for closure amid its critical coverage of Duterte—that the defendant's claims are “a desperate, time-worn, and calculated ploy to paint himself aggrieved.”
While Duterte remains popular among right-wing Filipinos, opposition lawmakers welcomed the former president's prosecution.
Federal lawmaker Leila de Lima—a vocal Duterte critic who spent 2,454 days behind bars following a 2017 arrest on bogus drug-related charges that were subsequently dismissed—welcomed the ICC charges in a Monday post on the social media site X.
"We already warned Duterte to stop the killings or he will inevitably face justice before the ICC, no matter how far off in the future," de Lima wrote. "That future we warned him about is now the present we are witnessing."
"Duterte did not lack warnings and advice from the Philippine human rights community about his future accountability," she continued. "He ignored all these warnings at his own peril. His detention and indictment for the drug war killings are the direct consequence of his own actions."
"As we have said again and again, he has no one to blame but himself," de Lima added. "His co-conspirators will follow him to the Hague soon enough."
In 2017, Trump said that Duterte was doing an "unbelievable job on the drug problem." Trump would later propose executing drug dealers in the United States.
In recent weeks, in likely violation of both US and international law, Trump has ordered deadly attacks on boats his administration claimed were transporting cocaine from Venezuela to the US.
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'Now Do Netanyahu': Philippines' Duterte Arrested Under ICC Warrant for Crimes Against Humanity
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant... shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice," said one human rights advocate.
Mar 11, 2025
On Tuesday, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by local authorities at Manila's international airport after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity. News of his arrest prompted some observers to urge the arrest of another public figure who faces ICC charges: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Duterte case will pose a test for the court, according to The New York Times. In the past six months, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military junta in Myanmar.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote "Perhaps Netanyahu and Gallant will be next..." in response to the news. Danny Shaw, a professor at City University of New York, posted a video of Duterte's arrest and wrote: "Why don't they arrest Netanyahu?"
Wim Zwijnenburg, a project leader at the Dutch peace organization PAX, wrote, "now do Netanyahu."
On Tuesday night, Duterte was placed on a plane that was bound for The Hague, where the court is headquartered, per the Times, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
The ICC has accused Duterte of crimes against humanity during his time as president and when he was the mayor of the city of Davao. During his tenure as president, from 2016 to 2022, Duterte's security forces carried out thousands of killings that his government cast as drug-related cases. In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch described his "war on drugs" as effectively "a campaign of extrajudicial execution in impoverished areas of Manila and other urban areas." Philippine National Police officers and unidentified "vigilantes" killed over 7,000 people between the start of his term and the release of that Human Rights Watch report, according to the group.
In 2017, Duterte earned praise from U.S. President Donald Trump, who told him in a phone call that he was doing "an unbelievable job on the drug problem," according to reporting at the time.
"Duterte's arrest on an ICC warrant is a hopeful sign for victims in the Philippines and beyond. It shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, can and will face justice, wherever they are in the world," said Agnes Callamard, secretary general of the human rights group Amnesty International, in a statement Tuesday. "At a time when too many governments renege on their ICC obligations while others attack or sanction international courts, Duterte's arrest is a huge moment for the power of international law."
Duterte's former chief legal counsel and presidential spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, said that the "ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines," in part because "the country withdrew as an ICC member state in 2018," according to a post on social media.
According to the Times, the court says the case only considers alleged crimes from the time when the country was still part of the court.
According to a copy of he warrant, which was obtained by the Times, three judges of the ICC said they believed Duterte "was responsible for the drug war killings that took place when he was president and mayor of Davao, and that there were reasonable grounds to believe that these attacks were 'both widespread and systematic.'"
The government itself, in 2022, said that over 6,200 "drug suspects" were killed during Duterte's war on drugs starting in 2016. Rights groups put the total number of people who died much higher, in the tens of thousands, according to PBS.
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Trump Pledges to 'Vigorously Pursue the Death Penalty'
"In the last six months of his first term, President Trump executed 13 individuals—more than any administration in 120 years," one critic noted.
Dec 24, 2024
Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that his administration will "vigorously" use capital punishment as part of his "make America safe again" agenda, despite copious evidence that the death penaltydoes not deter crime, is racially biased, and results in wrongful executions.
Responding to Democratic President Joe Biden's Monday commutation of 37 federal death sentences—an action that cannot be reversed—Trump took to his Truth Social platform to condemn the move.
"Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country," Trump fumed. "When you hear the acts of each, you won't believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can't believe this is happening!"
"As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters," Trump said in a separate Truth Social post. "We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!"
ACLU executive director Anthony Romero called Biden's move "the most consequential step of any president in our history to address the immoral and unconstitutional harms of capital punishment" and a bulwark against Trump, who "has a proven penchant and track record of conducting rushed executions."
"In the last six months of his first term, President Trump executed 13 individuals—more than any administration in 120 years," Romero noted.
Death penalty foes are particularly worried about Trump's campaign promise to seek federal death sentences for crimes other than murder.
"When I am back in the White House, I will immediately end the Biden border nightmare that traffickers are using to exploit vulnerable women and children," Trump said in July 2023. "I will urge Congress to ensure that anyone caught trafficking children across our border receives the death penalty immediately."
There is a higher likelihood of a compliant Congress given Republicans will control both the Senate and House of Representatives.
"We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts," Trump said earlier while announcing his 2024 run for president.
During his first term, Trump praised then-Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw the extrajudicial execution of thousands of drug dealers and users, for doing "an unbelievable job on the drug problem."
In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act—commonly known as the Crime Bill—which expanded the federal death penalty to approximately 60 crimes, including three that do not involve murder: espionage, treason, and large-scale drug trafficking. In addition to Republicans and mainstream Democrats like Biden, then a senator, the legislation had the support of progressives including then-Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Trump's enthusiastic embrace of capital punishment comes amid an international and national trend toward abolition. Twenty-three U.S. states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty, while five other states have gubernatorial holds on executions. In 2021, Biden's Justice Department paused federal executions.
However, Biden never succeeded in his campaign goal of pushing Congress to end the federal death penalty and 2024 also saw a
surge in executions in Republican-controlled states.
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