23/09/2025
‘I welcome the charges filed by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against former President Duterte for the crime against humanity of murder. This serves as a milestone in the process of exacting accountability for the crimes committed in Davao City by the DDS and during the drug war all over the Philippines by the so-called “national network” of death squads, both created and organized by Mayor, then President Duterte.
The wheels of justice started to grind as early as the OTP’s declaration of a preliminary examination of the drug war killings in 2018. As early as then we already warned Duterte to stop the killings or he will inevitably face justice before the ICC, no matter how far off in the future.
That future we warned him about is now the present we are witnessing. Duterte did not lack warnings and advice from the Philippine human rights community about his future accountability. He ignored all these warnings at his own peril. His detention and indictment for the drug war killings are the direct consequence of his own actions. As we have said again and again, he has no one to blame but himself. His co-conspirators will follow him to the Hague soon enough.’ - Leila De Lima
UPDATE: The ICC has released a public redacted version of the document containing charges against former Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, dated Monday, September 22.
The document alleges that Duterte is “individually criminally responsible” for crimes against humanity, specifically murder and attempted murder, committed in the Philippines between November 2011 and March 2019. | via Bea Cuadra, ABS-CBN News
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