Former President Faces Trial Over 76 K!llings During Drug Clearance Operations
Former President Faces Trial Over 76 Killings During Drug Clearance Operations
ICC prosecutors charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, accusing him of involvement in at least 76 killings linked to the campaign.
Former Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, is facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over murders allegedly committed during drug clearance operations carried out under his “war on drugs”.
ICC prosecutors charged Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, accusing him of involvement in at least 76 killings linked to the campaign.
A heavily redacted charge sheet dated July 4 but made public on Monday details the allegations against the 80-year-old former leader, now held in ICC detention in The Hague.
The first count accuses him of co-perpetrating 19 murders between 2013 and 2016 while serving as mayor of Davao City. The second count relates to 14 killings of so-called “High Value Targets” in 2016 and 2017 during his presidency.
Central to the trial is the third charge, which links Duterte to 43 murders allegedly carried out during “clearance” operations against lower-level drug users and pushers across the Philippines between 2016 and 2018. Prosecutors said, “The actual scale of victimisation during the charged period was significantly greater, as reflected in the widespread nature of the attack.”
The ICC noted that these charges stem from Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, which rights groups said claimed thousands of lives. An arrest warrant issued on March 7 already included one count of crimes against humanity relating to 43 alleged murders in the drug clearance operations.
The charges were set to be read at a scheduled court appearance, but the sitting was postponed as judges assess whether Duterte is fit to stand trial. His lawyer, Nicholas Kaufman, argued that the former president is not able to participate “as a result of cognitive impairment in multiple domains” and urged the ICC to indefinitely halt proceedings.
Duterte was arrested in Manila on March 11, flown to the Netherlands the same night, and has since been held at the ICC’s detention unit in Scheveningen Prison.
