Shortly before he landed in the Netherlands, the 79-year-old unapologetically defended his bloody “war on drugs” for which the ICC says there are “reasonable grounds” to charge him with murder as a crime against humanity.

Small-time drug dealers, users and others were killed without trial on his watch as mayor and, later, as president.

The official toll stands at 6,000, though activists believe the real figure could run into the tens of thousands.

Duterte said he cracked down on drug dealers to rid the country of street crimes.

However, rights groups allege that the campaign was rife with police abuse, targeting young men from the urban poor.

Duterte is the first Asian former head of state to be indicted by the ICC – and the first suspect to be flown to The Hague in three years.

And his arrival comes at a pivotal moment for the International Criminal Court.

Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest and deportation on Monday was the result of an unprecedented chain of events.

His supporters allege that the ICC is being used as a political tool by the country’s current president Ferdinand Marcos who has publicly fallen out with the powerful Duterte family.

The ICC is a court of last resort designed to hold the most powerful to account when domestic courts are unable or unwilling to do so. But this case is a reminder of the extent to which it depends on state cooperation in order to fulfil its mandate – it effectively has no power to arrest people without the cooperation of the countries they are in, which is most often refused.

In the case of Duterte, chances that he would ever be prosecuted by the ICC seemed unthinkable even in 2022, when his daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, allied with Marcos to create the powerful “uniteam” that swept parliamentary elections.

Up until a few months ago, Marcos had dismissed the idea of cooperating with the ICC.

But the pace at which Duterte was served an arrest warrant and extradited shows that when political winds shift, those once considered untouchable can find themselves touching down in The Hague.

The whole process of his extradition – from his detention in Manila to his arrival in The Hague – has been documented on social media by his daughter Kitty and Duterte himself through his aide. His plane was the most tracked on flight radar.

“I am the one who led our law enforcement and military. I said that I will protect you and I will be responsible for all of this,” he said on a Facebook video, one of many that was shared over more than 24 hours during his journey from Manila to The Hague.

It provided rare insight into what is usually an opaque process, and the world was able to follow, sometimes in real time, every step of it right down to the meals Duterte was served on board his chartered jet.

Duterte’s arrest now sends a strong signal that even powerful individuals may be held accountable for their actions, potentially deterring future abuses.

His case has also reignited debate about the ICC’s role in relation to national sovereignty, a concern often raised by non-member states like the United States, Russia, and China.

The court depends on its 128 members to fund and be the operational arm of this judicial body.

So Duterte’s headline-making arrival, followed by his first night in a jail cell at The Hague, offer the the court a much-needed win.

After serving two high-profile arrest warrants – one for the Russian president Vladimir Putin, and another for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza – which are unlikely to be enforced any time soon, the arrival of Duterte will be put forth as proof the court is capable of bringing those accused of the gravest atrocities to face justice.

It is a litmus test for the ICC’s ability to function effectively in an increasingly polarised climate.

ICC prosecutor Karim Khan was recently sanctioned by Donald Trump over the arrest warrant issued for Benjamin Netanyahu.

The detention of Duterte provides him with a powerful response.

“Many say international law is not strong,” Karim Khan acknowledged. “But international law is not as weak as some may think. When we come together, when we build partnerships, the rule of law can prevail.”

The former Philippines president will now mark his 80th birthday this month in the ICC’s detention facility, located in the dunes of The Hague.

The facility, once a Nazi prison complex, provides each detainee with a private cell, access to computers, a library, and sports facilities.

If he isn’t satisfied with the meals provided, Duterte has the option to prepare his own food using a shopping list in the detention center’s kitchen. He will also have access to medical care, lawyers, and visitors.

He is expected to make his initial court appearance in the coming days, where he will confirm his identity, choose the language he wishes to follow proceedings in, and acknowledge the charges against him.

Following this public appearance, a confirmation of charges hearing will follow, during which the judges will decide whether the prosecution has presented a sufficient amount of evidence to proceed to trial.

If the charges are confirmed, it could be many months before he eventually goes on trial, and years before a final judgment.

During his presidency from 2016 to 2022, Duterte styled himself as an anti-drug crusader, whose ruthless “war on drugs” killed thousands of alleged dealers and addicts.

His is a contentious legacy. A hugely popular leader, he was also fiercely opposed and criticised for his sexist comments, allegations of sexual abuse and other human rights violations. His anti-drug campaign, in particular, drew international condemnation.

In March 2025, Philippine police arrested the 79-year-old after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant accusing him of crimes against humanity over the deadly campaign. Human rights monitors called it a historic moment that marks the beginning of accountability for the thousands of deaths under his watch.

Days before his arrest, Duterte had said he was ready to go to jail. “If that’s my fate, that’s fine I will accept it,” he had said.

Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte was born in 1945 in the southern Philippines. His mother was a teacher and his father, a public official, later entered politics and became the governor of Davao. The Dutertes were well-connected to powerful clans in the south, where they still remain popular.

The younger Duterte trained as a lawyer and rose to become state prosecutor, eventually becoming mayor of Davao in 1988.

He has three children with former wife Elizabeth Zimmerman-Duterte, a German-American former flight attendant. One of them is Sara Duterte, the Philippines’ current vice-president whom parliament recently voted to impeach.

He has one daughter, Veronica, with his current partner, businesswoman Honeylet Avancena, and had previously claimed to have several girlfriends.

Duterte built his reputation fighting some of the Philippines’ biggest problems – crime, militancy and corruption – in Davao during his 22-year term as mayor. Mr Duterte told the BBC he had shot dead three men while he was mayor, confirming an earlier statement.

Human Rights Watch described him as the “death squad mayor”. It estimated that more than 1,000 people were killed with no legal process in the city under him.

It was his track record from Davao that won him nationwide support when he ran for president. And he knew it: “If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because I’d kill you,” he said at his final campaign rally.

He said in a televised debate that he would kill his own children if they took drugs. And when his son and son-in-law were accused of being involved in drug smuggling, he promised to resign if they were indeed guilty.

His 2016 campaign, the BBC’s Howard Johnson wrote, was “littered with obscenities and populist promises but light on details”.

He joked about the rape of an Australian missionary murdered in a prison riot in 1989, and proposed mass executions of suspected criminals.

Self-styled as both a socialist and a reformist, he promised sweeping political changes and greater federalism, but critics warned that without reforms at the local level, this would only hand unchecked power to regional clans.

But what brought him global notoriety was his relentless war on drugs.

He was dubbed “Duterte Harry”, a reference to Dirty Harry, the eponymous fictional American detective played by Clint Eastwood who takes the law into his own hands.

The tough-talking leader openly encouraged citizens and the police to shoot and kill suspected drug dealers and users.

The killings, which often involved people being gunned down on the streets or in alleys by unidentified men, sparked outrage and international condemnation – with many families saying the victims had nothing to do with drugs, but were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

But his campaign also had the support of many Filipinos who lauded his “tough” stance on street crime. On a particularly brutal night, police said they had killed 32 people in drug raids in the Bulacan province.

Police insisted they only killed in self-defence during drug busts. But families and human rights advocates, furious and aghast, protested that the killings were akin to executions. The dead included teens, and even a mayor and his wife.

In 2017, the entire police force – 1,200 officers – in Manila district was relieved of duty after three boys – 19, 17 and 14 – died after confrontations with the police. A year later, three officers were convicted for the murder of the 17-year-old, Kian Delos Santos. Police accused him of being a drug runner, but his family denied the charge.

Estimates of how many have died in Duterte’s war on drugs vary depending on who is counting. Official figures, as of November 2021, put the number at more than 6,200. But the country’s Commission on Human Rights (CHR) said in 2018 that the toll could be as high as 27,000.

Duterte, however, has stood by his brutal campaign: “I will never, never apologise for the deaths,” he said in a weekly national address in January 2022.

Duterte made global headlines for other reasons too – shockingly blunt and offensive statements, and unpredictable policy shifts, all of which earned him the moniker “Donald Trump of the East”.

He threatened to leave the UN, called the EU “hypocritical”, and compared his war on drugs to the Holocaust. He referred to former US President Barack Obama as the “son of a whore”, but his spokesman said he regretted it when Mr Obama cancelled a meeting. He swore at the Pope for causing traffic jams on his visits, and said God was “stupid” in a largely devout Catholic country.

When he kissed a female worker on stage, it was described as the “disgusting theatrics of a misogynist president” by rights group Gabriela. Worse, he said he had sexually assaulted a maid when he was a teenager.

His foreign policy, vague during campaigning, continued to flip-flop. He hinted at taking a stronger stance against China over maritime disputes in the South China Sea. He famously said he would ride a jet ski to a disputed island claimed by both countries and stick a flag on it. But as president he pivoted away from the US – a former colonial ruler turned military and economic ally – and closer to China and Russia.

The arduous process of making the Philippines more federal fell to the wayside. And he has been accused of targeting dissenters – two of his fiercest critics, senators Antonio Trillanes and Leila de Lima – were jailed. Maria Ressa, a Nobel Prize-winning journalist whose news website Rappler has reported on the controversial war on drugs, was accused in several court cases, from tax evasion to foreign ownership violations.

After his term, Trillanes and de Lima were freed and all charges against Ressa were dropped, proof that they were politically harassed during the Duterte years, according to the former president’s critics.

Covid proved to be Mr Duterte’s biggest challenge, tanking the strong economy he had inherited as remittances from overseas and domestic consumption took a hit. Despite one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, the country struggled to cope with rising Covid cases, hobbled by inequality and a fractured health system. It was one of the worst affected in Asia, with more than 3.6 million cases and 60,000 deaths.

But Duterte remained hugely popular. His approval ratings, which mostly stayed above 50%, only took a hit in 2021 at the peak of Covid.

When he chose to step away from politics in 2022, he said it was because “the overwhelming sentiment… is that I am not qualified”, possibly a reference to repeated opinion polls that put his daughter Sara ahead of him.

The younger Duterte became vice-president that same year, to Rodrigo Duterte’s successor Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos.

However the alliance unravelled soon after Marcos and Sara Duterte won the elections by a landslide. The feud escalated and in early 2025, lawmakers voted to impeach Sara Duterte over alleged misuse of public funds.

She has denied the charges and alleged she is the victim of a political vendetta.

The 79-year-old was taken into police custody shortly after his arrival at Manila airport from Hong Kong.

He has offered no apologies for his brutal anti-drugs crackdown, which saw thousands of people killed when he was president of the South East Asian nation from 2016 to 2022, and mayor of Davao city before that.

Upon his arrest, he questioned the basis for the warrant, asking: “What crime [have] I committed?”

Duterte’s former presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo criticised the arrest, calling it “unlawful” as the Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019.

The ICC earlier said that it has jurisdiction in the Philippines over alleged crimes committed before the country withdrew as a member.

But activists called the arrest a “historic moment” for those who perished in his drug war and their families, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) said.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but today, it has bent towards justice. Duterte’s arrest is the beginning of accountability for the mass killings that defined his brutal rule,” said ICHRP chairman Peter Murphy.

Duterte had been in Hong Kong to campaign for the upcoming 12 May mid-term elections, where he had planned to run again for mayor of Davao.

Footage aired on local television showed him walking out of the airport using a cane. Authorities say he is in “good health” and is being cared for by government doctors.

“What is my sin? I did everything in my time for peace and a peaceful life for the Filipino people,” he told a cheering crowd of Filipino expatriates before leaving Hong Kong.

A video posted by his daughter, Veronica Duterte, showed Duterte in custody in a lounge at Manila’s Villamor Air Base. In it, he can be heard questioning the reason for his arrest.

“What is the law and what is the crime that I committed? I was brought here not of my own volition, it is somebody else’s. You have to answer now for the deprivation of liberty.”

Duterte’s arrest marks the “beginning of a new chapter in Philippine history”, said Filipino political scientist Richard Heydarian.

“This is about rule of law and human rights,” he said.

Heydarian added that authorities had arrested Duterte promptly at the airport instead of letting the matter take its course through the local courts to “avoid political chaos”.

“Duterte’s supporters were hoping they could go berserk in terms of public rallies and [use] all sorts of delaying tactics… [to] drag things on until the warrant of arrest loses momentum,” he said.

The demand for justice in Duterte’s drug war goes “hand in hand” with the political interests of his successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, Heydarian said.

The Duterte and Marcos families formed a formidable alliance in the last elections in 2022, where against the elder Duterte’s wishes, his daughter Sara ran as Marcos Jr’s vice-president instead of seeking her father’s post.

The relationship unravelled publicly in recent months as the two families pursued separate political agendas.

Marcos initially refused to co-operate with the ICC investigation, but as his relationship with the Duterte family deteriorated, he changed his stance, and later indicated that the Philippines would co-operate.

It is not clear yet whether Marcos would go as far as extraditing the former president to stand trial in The Hague.

Duterte served as mayor of Davao, a sprawling southern metropolis, for 22 years and has made it one of the country’s safest from street crimes.

He used the city’s peace-and-order reputation to cast himself as a tough-talking anti-establishment politician to win the 2016 elections by a landslide.

With fiery rhetoric, he rallied security forces to shoot drug suspects dead. More than 6,000 suspects were gunned down by police or unknown assailants during the campaign, but rights groups say the number could be higher.

A previous UN report found that most victims were young, poor urban males and that police, who do not need search or arrest warrants to conduct house raids, systematically forced suspects to make self-incriminating statements or risk facing lethal force.

Critics said the campaign targeted street-level pushers and failed to catch big-time drug lords. Many families also claimed that the victims – their sons, brothers or husbands – were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Investigations in parliament pointed to a shadowy “death squad” of bounty hunters targeting drug suspects. Duterte has denied the allegations of abuse.

“Do not question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it… I did it for my country,” Duterte told a parliament investigation in October.

“I hate drugs, make no mistake about it.”

The ICC first took note of the alleged abuses in 2016 and started its investigation in 2021. It covered cases from November 2011, when Duterte was mayor of Davao, to March 2019, before the Philippines withdrew from the ICC.

Since taking power, Marcos has scaled back Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign and promised a less violent approach to the drug problem, but hundreds of drug-related killings have been recorded during his administration.

Duterte remains widely popular in the Philippines as he is the country’s first leader from Mindanao, a region south of Manila, where many feel marginalised by the leaders in the capital.

He often speaks in Cebuano, the regional language, not Tagalog, which is more widely-spoken in Manila and northern regions.

When he stepped down in 2022, nearly nine in 10 Filipinos said they were satisfied with his performance as president – a score unseen among his predecessors since the restoration of democracy in 1986, according to the Social Weather Stations research institute.

His populist rhetoric and blunt statements earned him the moniker “Donald Trump of the East”. He has called Russian President Vladimir Putin his “idol” and under his administration, the Philippines’ pivoted their foreign policy to China away from the US, its long-standing ally.

Marcos restored Manila’s ties with Washington and criticised the Duterte government for being “Chinese lackeys” as the Philippines is locked in sea dispute with China.

China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that it was “closely monitoring the development of the situation” and warned the ICC against “politicisation” and “double standards” in the arrest of Duterte.

Duterte’sdaughter and political heir, Sara Duterte, is tipped as a potential presidential candidate in 2028. The incumbent, Marcos, is barred by the constitution from seeking re-election.