President Ferdinand Marcos said he would not hand over his predecessor to the International Criminal Court (ICC) regardless of the ongoing tirades coming from former President Rodrigo Duterte.
During FOCAP’s 50th Anniversary Presidential Forum, Mr. Marcos was asked if he would allow the ICC to arrest Duterte over his deadly “war on drugs” campaign, Mr. Marcos said “no”.
The refusal of the current administration to hand over Duterte to the ICC came even as Duterte criticized Marcos earlier for being a drug addict. Marcos has also called out Duterte for drug use.
Marcos, however, stood firm on his decision not to recognize ICC’s jurisdiction in the Philippines.
“We are well within international law when we take the position of not recognizing the jurisdiction of the ICC in the Philippines,” the President stated.
The ICC launched a formal inquiry into Duterte’s drug war sometime in September 2021.
The inquiry was suspended two months later after the former administration said it was re-investigating hundreds of cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police operatives, hitmen, and vigilantes.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor later moved to reopen the inquiry, and pre-trial judges at the court eventually agreed to reopen the case in late January 2023. It was a decision that Manila appealed shortly afterwards and lost.
Asked about the current relationship between him and the Duterte clan, President Marcos said “It’s complicated”. The relationship between the two has been fractured in the last two years.
Duterte, who withdrew the country from the ICC in 2019, is under investigation for alleged human rights abuses committed under his bloody drug war.
The “war on drugs” campaign, which started in 2016, resulted in a minimum of 6,000 deaths, as per official government records.
However, human rights organizations estimated a much higher toll, ranging from 12,000 to 30,000 between 2016 and 2019.
While Marcos insisted that they focus on treatment and rehabilitation, the drug war has continued under his administration.