The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague delivered a one-two punch to former president Rodrigo Duterte last week, nearly 10 years after he took office and unleashed his brutal “war on drugs” across the Philippines. The first blow landed on April 22, when the ICC Appeals Chamber upheld the October 2025 Pre-Trial Chamber I...
Tag: crimes against humanity
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At the ICC, a portrait of the strongman as aging family man
Nicholas Kaufman’s tack in portraying Rodrigo Duterte as an aging family man isolated from loved ones comprised a curious turn in the Defense’s presentation at the just-concluded confirmation of charges hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Having harped on the Prosecution’s supposed use of rhetoric and hyperbole to cover what he...
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Ombudsman ruling not to prosecute ‘tokhang’ officers seen as a ‘legal paradox’
Lawyers for the sole survivor of an alleged extrajudicial killing by the police during an antidrug operation nine years ago are urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling upholding the Office of the Ombudsman’s decision to junk their petition to charge four officers and six civilian informants with multiple murder and frustrated murder. In...
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No word yet from ‘Bato’ on rumored ICC warrant of arrest, Sotto says
Senate President Vicente Sotto III said there has been no word yet from Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa regarding the arrest warrant purportedly issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his being an alleged co-conspirator in Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs.” Sotto replied in the negative on Saturday when CoverStory asked if Dela Rosa...
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True power can be ours if we put our values and principles beyond the corrupt
Here we go again. Time was when every exhortation by then President Rodrigo Duterte to kill or threat to kill (“I will kill you”) was dismissed by his apologists as hyperbole or exaggeration. Until the dead bodies started piling up and no amount of deflection and denial could cover the fact that he meant what...
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Retired ICC judge Raul Pangalangan: The Court has ‘jurisdiction over jurisdiction’
The arrest and dispatch to The Hague of former president Rodrigo Duterte on March 11 stunned many Filipinos, not least his family members and their ardent supporters. For some relatives of the victims of his “war on drugs” watching the historic daylong event on television in real time was like an Edsa 1986 moment: They...
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‘Nanlaban. Tepok.’
At the height of Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” there was a huge billboard along C5 in Pasig City that advertised a pesticide called Tepox. It had an image of a dead cockroach, flat on its back and its feet up in the air, with this message: “Ipis. Nanlaban. Tepox.” The tongue-in-cheek ad played on the...
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Duterte’s arrest is about crimes against humanity, not ‘pamumulitika’
Too bad that after the daylong wait on Tuesday for President Marcos Jr. to enlighten the nation on the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte, no one thought to ask, when he agreed to take questions, what he thought of his sister’s statement lamenting the supposed failure of Filipinos to learn from the past. Minutes after the...
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‘We have seen the last of Duterte,’ says Trillanes
After the chartered Lear jet carrying Rodrigo Duterte finally took off from Manila late Tuesday night for The Hague in the Netherlands, a former senator and a human rights lawyer predicted that his departure would be for good. In The Hague, the 79-year-old former president will face charges of crimes against humanity before the International...