A PLANE carrying former Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte left Manila bound for The Hague on Tuesday night following his arrest on an International Criminal Court warrant tied to his deadly war on drugs, President Ferdinand Marcos said.
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.
“Former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte took off at 11:03 pm this evening and exited Philippine airspace,” Marcos told a press briefing shortly after takeoff.
“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.”
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 in a morning statement.
Before his evening departure, Philippine Vice President Sara 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.
Duterte had earlier taken to social media to say 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,” he said on Instagram live after his lawyers filed a petition with the court.
“What is the crime that I committed? Show to me now the legal basis of my being here,” he said in a separate video on the same platform.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar.com showed that the plane carrying the former president — tail number RP-C5219 — was scheduled to leave Dubai for Rotterdam at 2130 GMT Tuesday.
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, while Philippine rights alliance Karapatan said his arrest was “long overdue”.
Human Rights Watch also said the arrest was a “critical step for accountability in the Philippines”.