Philippine senator flees to evade ICC arrest over role in Duterte’s drug war

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - MANILA — A Filipino senator who oversaw former president Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs has taken refuge inside the country's parliament as the International Criminal Court unsealed an arrest warrant regarding his role in the Philippines’ deadly drug war.

Ronald Dela Rosa was pictured fleeing into the Senate building on Monday as officers sought to detain him. He narrowly escaped and was placed under protective custody.

Police later said they would not arrest him while he was in custody of the Senate.

The warrant, which had been held under seal since November, was spurred by the former police chief’s role in ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs during his time in office in 2016-2022.

The ICC confirmed on Monday evening that the warrant had been issued confidentially on November 6. It charges Dela Rosa as an “indirect co-perpetrator” in the “crime against humanity of murder”.

Dela Rosa is accused of the killing of at least 32 people between 2016 and 2018, as an "indirect co-perpetrator" in Duterte's anti-drugs campaign, in which thousands of alleged drug dealers were shot and killed.

Former president Duterte has been in ICC custody in The Hague since his arrest in March 2025.

Security camera footage played to lawmakers on Monday showed National Bureau of Investigation agents chasing Dela Rosa up flights of stairs and a corridor in the Senate building after he arrived.

Dela Rosa has said that he would remain within the Senate's premises and "do everything" to avoid being taken to the Hague.

His lawyers say they have asked the Supreme Court to block his arrest in the absence of a valid Philippine judicial warrant.

On Tuesday morning, Dela Rosa urged his supporters, who have gathered outside the Senate building, to "keep vigil in front of the Senate until the Supreme Court decides".

He also called on Philippine Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who is feuding with the Duterte political dynasty, to file a local case against him if he believed him to be guilty.

"If I have an obligation, I will answer it in the local court, not a foreign one," he told reporters.

The chaos that has gripped the Senate comes as its 24 members, dominated by Duterte's allies, elected a new president on Monday.

The new senate president, Alan Peter Cayetano, told reporters that the chamber would only act on arrest warrants from a Philippine court.

But it is Marcos's allies who control the lower House of Representatives, which earlier in the day voted to impeach Duterte's daughter Sara, the current vice-president, for the second time.

The feud between the Duterte and Marcos dynasties have become increasingly bitter, after the collapse of the alliance which helped them to win the 2022 election.

Sara Duterte is the front-runner to succeed President Marcos in the next election in two years' time, and she accuses him of using the ICC arrest warrants and her impeachment as political weapons to weaken her campaign.

For his part, the elder Duterte has refused to recognise the ICC proceedings, arguing that during his presidency in 2019 the Philippines had pulled out of the Rome Statute, the ICC's founding agreement.

But last month, judges in the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber rejected that argument on the grounds that the alleged crimes had happened between 2011 and 2019, while the Philippines was still a member of the ICC, paving the way for Duterte to stand trial.