A Twisting Course
Duterte’s day arrest at Manila’s worldwide air-port followed a short trip to Hong Kong.
Speaking to thousands of international Filipino workers there Sunday, the former senator decried the analysis, labelling International investigators” sons of whores” while saying he had “accept it” if an imprisonment were to be his destiny.
The Philippines quit the ICC in 2019 on Duterte’s guidelines, but the judge maintained it had control over deaths before the handover, as well as murders in the southwestern area of Davao when Duterte was president, years before he became leader.
It launched a formal investigation in September 2021, just to dismiss it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining some hundred instances of drug activities that led to deaths at the hands of officers, hitmen and police.
The event resumed in July 2023 after a five-judge board rejected the Philippines ‘ criticism that the judge lacked control.
Since then, the Marcos state has on many occasions said it would never cooperate with the research.
But Undersecretary of the National Communications Office Claire Castro on Sunday said that if Interpol had “ask the needed assistance from the government, it is obliged to follow”.
Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines who supported his quick-fix alternatives to murder, and he remains a strong political power.