Former President Rodrigo Duterte boards plane going to an undisclosed location, a few hours after a warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court was served by INTERPOL Manila on March 11, 2025.   Contributed Photo

MANILA — Can the Philippines' top court order the International Criminal Court to return former President Rodrigo Duterte to the country?

This, after the Marcos administration arrested Duterte on Tuesday and now attempts to hand him over to The Hague in the Netherlands, where the ICC is based and where Duterte is expected to face trial soon.

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Duterte is fighting accusations that he committed crimes against humanity when he allegedly orchestrated thousands of both drug-related and non-drug-related killings during his time as Davao City mayor and later as president under his flagship war on drugs.

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Duterte, through his lawyers, along with his ally and chief implementer of his drug war, Sen. Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa, questioned his arrest in a last-ditch effort before the Supreme Court in hopes of obtaining relief.

The plane carrying Duterte, however, took off from the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City without the court issuing a temporary restraining order, which could render the case moot and academic, according to former Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio.

Lawyer Ruben Carranza of the International Center for Transitional Justice told ANC that it was unlikely that the high court would issue an injuction because he said "you only restrain something that has not been done."

He said nonetheless that a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court would "not be something that the ICC is bound to obey and return Rodrigo Duterte."

"Filipinos should understand that this not an exceptional set of circumstances in the Philippines. This has happened in other countries where the ICC has been involved and there have been other heads of state or former presidents who have been arrested using a warrant of arrest from the ICC," he added.

Carranza also noted that the ICC issuing a warrant of arrest instead of a summons meant that the tribunal believed that Duterte "might obstruct the case, might intimidate witnesses, [and] might commit violence to stop trial against him."

"That is precisely one reason why a court will not release someone who has been arrested and who is going to be charged," he added.

WAS THE ARREST LEGAL?

Duterte's daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, called his arrest an infringement on the country's sovereignty and even described it as a form of "state kidnapping."

Carranza however said he believed that Duterte's arrest was legal because of the existence of a warrant of arrest, although the Philippines was not duty-bound to cooperate with the warrant since the country had already officially withdrawn from the ICC in 2019.

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He noted that even though the Philippines was no longer a member of the ICC, it still has some "residual obligations not necessarily to cooperate in the arrest but, in general, to not defeat the purpose of the ICC itself."

Shortly after Duterte was flown out of the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told a late-night conference on Tuesday that Manila served the arrest warrant to the former leader because it has commitments and obligations to the International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol, of which the country is a member.

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