The vice president has described former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest over his deadly drug war as ‘oppression’.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, the daughter of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, is on her way to the Netherlands to help her father after he was arrested in Manila on a warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and flown to The Hague.
Rodrigo Duterte, who served as president from 2016 to 2022, was placed on a plane on Tuesday just hours after his arrest at Manila airport over alleged “crimes against humanity” stemming from a crackdown on drugs that killed thousands of people during his presidency.
Duterte, 79, could now become the first Asian former head of state to go on trial at the ICC.
Sara boarded a morning flight to Amsterdam, her office said in a statement on Wednesday. She is planning to help organise her father’s legal team in the Netherlands, local news outlet Rappler reported.
In an earlier statement, Sara said her father was “being forcibly taken to The Hague” in what amounted to “oppression and persecution”.
“This is a blatant affront to our sovereignty and an insult to every Filipino who believes in our nation’s independence,” she said.
According to the Rappler report, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has defended his government’s decision to facilitate the former president’s arrest and transfer to the ICC, saying it was “in compliance with our commitments to Interpol” – the international policing agency.
Duterte’s youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte, plans to file a habeas corpus request with the Philippine Supreme Court to compel the government to bring her father back, Duterte’s former chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo said.
Silvestre Bello, a former labour minister and one of the former president’s lawyers, said a legal team would meet to assess options and seek clarity on where the former president will be taken and whether they would be granted access to him.
“First thing we will do is find out where exactly the former president will be brought, so we know where we should go, because he will need legal assistance,” Bello said.
“We will also discuss all possible legal remedies.”
Sara’s travel to The Hague comes one month after she was impeached by the Philippine lower house of Congress amid a growing rift with Marcos Jr.
The vote came after lawmakers, many of whom are allies of Marcos, signed a petition to remove her from office.
While exact details have not been shared, the impeachment vote followed a string of complaints accusing the vice president of crimes ranging from the misuse of public funds to plotting Marcos’s assassination.
Sara has consistently denied wrongdoing and described moves against her as a political vendetta.
While the ICC has yet to issue an official statement on the specific charges against her father, the court has been investigating allegations of “crimes against humanity” committed by Duterte since 2018, when he was still in power.
Duterte ran for president in 2016 on a single issue of fighting crime in the Philippines.
During his campaign and later on as president, he repeatedly urged police to “kill” drug suspects, or encouraged suspects to fight back to justify their own deadly shootings.
According to police records, more than 7,000 people were killed in official antidrug operations during his six years in office.
In the hours after Duterte’s arrest, family members and supporters of people killed during Duterte’s presidency held a candlelit vigil in Quezon City.
Their protest signs called for justice for victims of the ex-president’s so-called war on drugs, anti-terror laws and martial law in Mindanao.