Philippine VP: Arrest of ex-leader Rodrigo Duterte an ‘extraordinary rendition’

The Marcos administration subjected her father to “extraordinary rendition” by arresting Rodrigo Duterte and transferring the ex-Philippine leader to the custody of a world court, Vice President Sara Duterte testified as the Senate launched an inquiry into the controversial arrest. 

Sen. Imee Marcos, the sister of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., led a hearing on Thursday where officials from the administration were grilled about the March 11 arrest of Rodrigo Duterte on a warrant from the International Criminal Court. 

“This was patently an illegal arrest,” Sara Duterte, who is in The Hague to support her father before the ICC, told the Senate inquiry via a video call. “This constitutes extraordinary rendition.” 

“A Filipino citizen, a former president, was taken into custody without a valid warrant issued by a Philippine court, without due process and without any legal basis under our laws,” the vice president said, arguing that the Philippines had already withdrawn from the statute that created the ICC. 

Hours after arresting him, Philippine authorities put Duterte on a private jet that flew him to the Netherlands, where he will face the charge of crime against humanity of murder tied to his past administration’s bloody drug war.

The arrest of the populist former leader has left Filipinos divided weeks ahead of mid-term polls, which could be a political battleground between candidates split in their loyalties to the influential but feuding Marcos and Duterte families.

“[Duterte] was denied all access to the legal recourse in the country of his citizenship,” Salvador Medialdea, Rodrigo Duterte’s former executive secretary, told the ICC on March 14 when the former president appeared before the world court for the first time. “It was a pure and simple kidnapping.”

The term “extraordinary rendition” evokes an extrajudicial practice implemented by the George W. Bush administration in the United States after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. 

Suspected terrorists were detained without court warrants and flown to so-called CIA “black sites” overseas, where many were interrogated and tortured. Many of them were later taken for imprisonment at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

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During Senate testimony on Thursday, Philippine officials reiterated that Duterte’s arrest was aboveboard. 

“We surrendered an individual to the ICC who is subject to a warrant of arrest. That is what we did,” Justice Secretary Crispin Remulla said at the hearing.

Meanwhile at the Malacañang palace in Manila, presidential spokesperson Claire Castro defended the administration’s action in arresting and turning Duterte over to the ICC. 

“We are simply enforcing the law,” she told reporters. “If there are those who should be held accountable, as he has said before, then they should be held accountable.” 

During Duterte’s term as president (2016-2022), he launched an anti-narcotics crackdown that left more than 6,000 suspected drug dealers and addicts dead. The figure could be higher, ranging from 20,000 to 30,000, human rights groups said.

Imee Marcos heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is a close friend of Sara Duterte. Sen. Marcos expressed anger at how the former president was allegedly forced onto a chartered executive jet for the long flight to the Netherlands. 

“This is what the entire country saw, and the only question remaining is, why did we surrender a fellow Filipino?” the senator said. “If your brother is being sought after, will you turn him in?”

“This is what has happened. We surrendered Rodrigo Roa Duterte to a foreign land as if he is stateless, that our country appears incapable of rendering justice in its own home,” she said. “Since when did the Philippines become a province of The Hague?”

Her brother, President Marcos, had yet to react publicly to the Senate inquiry, which took place nearly a week after a frail-looking Duterte faced a panel of ICC judges. 

Politics at play?

The president’s sister is up for reelection in the upcoming May midterms, and while she is on a slate aligned with the administration slate, she has publicized her alliance with the Dutertes. 

Sara Duterte herself faces her own troubles, having been impeached as vice president by the House of Representatives on alleged corruption. She goes to trial at the Senate in July.

The Marcos and Duterte families joined hands in an alliance to win the general election in 2022, but the partnership ended acrimoniously amid pressure on the Marcos administration to allow an ICC investigation into former President Duterte’s drug war.

The Duterte family still retains near cultish loyalty from followers, especially in the southern regions, a factor analysts said could come into play in the May midterm elections when Filipinos choose members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and their local leaders.