MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 13 November) – Malacañang on Wednesday said the government will not object if former President Rodrigo Duterte wants to surrender himself to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Former President Rodrigo R. Duterte at the House of Representatives’ hearing on Wednesday (13 November 2024). Screenshot from a livestream of the House’s Facebook page
“If the former President desires to surrender himself to the jurisdiction of the ICC, the government will neither object to it nor move to block the fulfillment of his desire,” Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said in a statement.
During the quad committee hearing at the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Duterte dared the ICC to come as early as Thursday, November 14, to investigate him for alleged crimes against humanity in his bloody “war on drugs.”
“But if the ICC refers the process to Interpol, which may then transmit a red notice to the Philippine authorities, the government will feel obliged to consider the red notice as a request to be honored, in which case the domestic law enforcement agencies shall be bound to accord full cooperation to Interpol, pursuant to established protocols,” Bersamin said.
A red notice is a request “to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action,” according to Interpol.
“Allow us to reiterate the DOJ’s position for clarity, the Secretary has repeatedly said that despite the withdrawal of the Philippines from the Rome Statute, the country remains a member country of the Interpol,” the Department of Justice said in a statement last August.
“Thus, when requests are made by the ICC through the Interpol and Interpol, in turn, relays such requests to our country, the Philippine government is legally obliged to accord due course to the same, by all means,” the statement added.
The Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, in 2019 after the tribunal started a probe into the Duterte administration’s drug war that killed around 6,200 drug suspects, according to government records.
But human rights groups said the death toll may reach as high as 30,000. (H. Marcos C. Mordeno / MindaNews)
