Philippine ex-Prez Duterte held for his drug crackdown killings

Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte boarded a jet on Tuesday, his daughter and local media said, hours after he was arrested at the request of the International Criminal Court over killings in his war on drugs.

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“They took dad from us, put him on a plane and wouldn’t say where to. People, wake up,” Veronica Duterte, the ex-leader’s youngest daughter, said on Instagram.

Local media said it had received confirmation from a senior police official that the flight was bound for the Hague, where the ICC is based.

Duterte, the maverick former mayor who led the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, was arrested at a Manila airport on arrival from Hong Kong early on Tuesday, in a major step in the ICC’s investigation into thousands of killings in an anti-drugs crackdown that defined his presidency.

The “war on drugs” was Duterte’s signature campaign that swept the mercurial former prosecutor to power and he soon delivered on promises he made during vitriolic speeches to kill thousands of drug pushers.