Duterte’s ICC jailing: Marcos’ abomination
First of two parts
NEXT to his servility to the US which has alienated us from the superpower in the region, and made us targets in a US-Sino war, it is the kidnapping in March of former president Duterte, 80 years and frail, by the Marcos Jr. regime and shanghaiing to a dubious “court” in Hague that is President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s worst crime against the nation.
At least in the arrest of two other presidents — Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — it was Filipino judges who heard their cases. Duterte’s judges are a Romanian, a West African and a Mexican who probably think the Philippines is just like the tribal, bloodthirsty leaders from sub-Saharan nations who have been the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) victims.
Now, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla doesn’t realize how appalling this was that he seems to be delighted that the ICC wants to put Sen. Ronaldo Dela Rosa in the same hellish situation, that is really a betrayal of our sovereignty.
Senate
I applaud the Senate for declaring that it would offer asylum to its colleague. But how can a senator in effect be jailed in the cramped confines of the old GSIS building where it is located? This could take years, since ICC cases on average take eight years to resolve. The Senate should instead issue a resolution that the asylum it will give Dela Rosa will encompass the Philippine territory, and any person, local or foreign, attempting to arrest him will be declared in contempt of the legislative body and jailed.
The Philippines in 2019 withdrew from the ICC. It is a blatant violation of logic and international law for this questionable body to claim that the Philippines’ former president and other Filipinos are still subject to its jurisdiction. It is just sickening that Marcos delivered him to the ICC, since this body doesn’t have an enforcement arm. And to think that without Duterte’s support in the 2022 elections, no way he could have become president.
Most international law scholars say that states are legally permitted to withdraw their consent to the ICC’s general compulsory jurisdiction, as this jurisdiction is fundamentally based on state consent, as all international bodies are.
The ICC Statute allows countries to declare, modify, or revoke acceptance at any time, and many scholars see this as a pragmatic recognition of sovereign rights, even if it undermines the ideal of binding third-party dispute resolution. Several important nations have never joined or ratified the Rome Statute, so they have never been under ICC jurisdiction: the United States, Russia, China, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
I don’t think Marcos has even been briefed on the nature of the ICC — especially the fact that major powers doubt its legitimacy. I don’t think that Marcos, not known to be a reader, has even read the ICC prosecutor’s “Document Containing the Charges” that is the basis for Duterte’s detention to face the accusations. The document is scandalously just 15 pages long, when in our legal system, criminal charges typically are hundreds of pages long.
Consciences
The ICC came into existence in 2002. European countries lobbied for its creation, really to assuage their consciences for the lack of legal systems and the weakness of civilized values in the colonies in Africa that they had ransacked and left. This resulted in horrific massacres and genocide among the tribes in these backward nations that had been their colonies.
The basic premise of the ICC is that it acts only when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute such crimes.
Thus it has detained and imprisoned individuals overwhelmingly from African countries, mostly leaders and commanders of tribe-based armed groups charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, among these: Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (Democratic Republic of Congo), convicted of war crimes (using child soldiers); Germain Katanga (DRC), convicted of war crimes (murder, pillaging, attacks against civilians) in 2014; Jean-Pierre Bemba (Central African Republic), convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity; and Bosco Ntaganda (DRC), convicted in 2019 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Marcos should be ashamed that he has put a former, very much respected Philippine president into this class of bloodthirsty leaders.
Duterte is the first non-African to be jailed and tried by the ICC. From just this list alone, one would certainly be shocked why Duterte, who undertook a widely acclaimed campaign against illegal drugs and who is from a country with a 118-year-old legal system closely patterned after the US, was kidnapped to stand trial by the ICC.
Marcos
The answer to this is that Marcos, aided by the communists against whom Duterte nearly annihilated during his administration, saw it as a means of removing the charismatic former president from the Philippine political scene, so his power to rally support for his daughter Vice President Sara for the 2028 presidential elections is diminished.
The US fears that after its puppet president steps down in 2028, a President Sara Duterte would dismantle Marcos’ anti-China foreign policy, and even kick out from the country its nine military bases, which the Pentagon sees as crucial for them to fight the Chinese. It has therefore helped and even financed the vast propaganda machine — which includes notably Rappler and the PCIJ — that has falsely painted Duterte as a “mass murderer.”
Let’s be frank: Marcos, given the fact that an ICC case lasts on the average 8 years (when Duterte would be 88 years old), is hoping a despondent former president — given his physical condition — will die in that Hague prison. Indeed, out of the 73 indicted by the ICC, nine died in the ICC’s prisons.
For this atrocity he did to a beloved former president, a symbol of the nation, Marcos should have been ousted. But we have lost the fire of our values.
Marcos and his police officials have broken Philippine laws in kidnapping Duterte to bring him to The Hague to face the ICC’s kangaroo-court proceedings. Law professor and experienced criminal and international law attorney Anthony Ludalvi Vista, in his recent Facebook post titled “No Court Order, No ICC Request, No Red Notice: How Duterte Was Taken Without Legal Paper,” explained (excerpts):
Lawless
“When Duterte was arrested March 11 by a police team led by Gen. Nicolas Torre, there was no court warrant, no ICC request, and no Interpol notice. The 1987 Constitution says no person may be arrested without a warrant issued by a judge, except in three cases — if caught in the act of committing a crime, chased right after doing so, or escaping from detention. Duterte was doing none of these. He was not a fugitive. He was not committing a crime. He was not under any court process. Without a judge’s order, there was no legal ground to arrest him.”
This international law expert continued:
“Marcos’ officials themselves admitted that there was no Interpol Red Notice for Duterte’s arrest. Torre justified Duterte’s arrest on an Interpol document called ‘diffusion’ — an internal communication that was not approved or cleared by Interpol’s general secretariat in Lyon, France.
“In simple terms, the ‘Interpol letter’ isn’t a judicial order, and not a binding international directive. It gave no legal power to arrest anyone under Philippine or international law.
“The ICC had issued a warrant dated March 7, 2025, but this was never sent to the Philippine government. There was no request for arrest or surrender, no diplomatic note, and no filing before any local court. Under Article 59 of the Rome Statute, the ICC cannot simply order a country to arrest someone. It must first ask the courts of that country to review and confirm the legality of the arrest. That never happened here.
“This means a Philippine court must first hear the case, issue the necessary order, and then allow the surrender. No such process was ever done. Without a court case or order, RA 9851 gives no one — not even the police — any power to arrest a Filipino citizen for international crimes.
“Duterte was placed on a chartered flight to The Hague. He was never brought before any Philippine judge. No court authorized his transfer. No hearing was held to verify the legality of the arrest or to allow him to challenge it. The entire operation — arrest, detention and airlift — happened outside the supervision of the courts.”
While staying in the shadows, only Marcos could have ordered his minions to arrest Duterte and surrender him to the ICC. But this was clearly illegal, a “culpable violation of the Constitution,” a clear ground for impeaching him.
But we are no longer ruled under a Constitution, but under the whims of President Marcos.
On Wednesday — The ICC case: without logic nor evidence
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Duterte’s ICC jailing: Marcos’ abomination
Source: Breaking News PH
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