“NO APOLOGIES, NO EXCUSES”
Duterte, 79, has repeatedly defended the crackdown. He denies ordering the murders of drug suspects and said he instructed police to kill only in self-defence.
A self-professed killer, Duterte told officers to fatally shoot narcotics suspects if their lives were at risk and insisted the crackdown saved families and prevented the Philippines from turning into a “narco-politics state”.
The arrest follows years of Duterte taunting the ICC since he unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the court’s founding treaty in 2019 as it started looking into allegations of systematic extrajudicial killings on his watch.
The Philippines had until last year refused to cooperate with an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity by the ICC, which says it has jurisdiction to probe incidents while a country is a member.
At the opening of a Philippine Senate probe into the drug war in October, Duterte said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his actions.
“I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” he said.
According to police, 6,200 suspects were killed during anti-drug operations that they say ended in shootouts. But activists say the real toll of the crackdown was far greater, with thousands of slumland drug users, many of whom were included on official “watch lists”, killed in mysterious circumstances.
Police deny involvement in those killings and reject allegations from rights groups of systematic executions and cover-ups.
