MANILA:
Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte boarded a flight sure for The Hague on Tuesday night time, his lawyer mentioned, following his arrest on an Worldwide Prison Courtroom warrant tied to his lethal warfare on medicine.
The 79-year-old faces a cost of “the crime towards humanity of homicide”, based on the ICC, for a crackdown that rights teams estimate killed tens of hundreds of largely poor males, usually with out proof they had been linked to medicine.
As of 9 pm (1300 GMT), the previous president had been positioned aboard an plane sure for the Hague, based on certainly one of his legal professionals.
Martin Delgra advised a gaggle chat open to journalists on messaging app Viber that Duterte had boarded the aircraft at Manila’s Villamor Air Base with three others at about 9 pm (1300 GMT), including: “We can’t go close to the aircraft. Airplane nonetheless on tarmac with door open.”
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte had earlier mentioned her father was being “forcibly taken to The Hague tonight”.
“This isn’t justice — that is oppression and persecution,” Duterte’s eldest daughter mentioned in a press release.
A photograph posted by Delgra to the identical group chat confirmed the aircraft’s tail quantity as RP-C5219.
Whereas flight monitoring website FlightRadar.com had no departure time from Manila, the aircraft was scheduled to go away Dubai at 2130 GMT Tuesday then head to Rotterdam.
Duterte had earlier taken to social media to say he believed the Philippine Supreme Courtroom would step in and stop his switch.
“The Supreme Courtroom won’t comply with that. We do not need an extradition treaty,” he mentioned on Instagram dwell after his legal professionals filed a petition with the courtroom.
“What’s the crime that I dedicated? Present to me now the authorized foundation of my being right here,” he mentioned in a separate video on the identical platform.
Duterte was arrested on the airport Tuesday morning after “Interpol Manila obtained the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC”, the presidential palace mentioned in a morning assertion. AFP