For­mer Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Ro­dri­go Duterte was ar­rest­ed Tues­day on a war­rant from the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court ac­cus­ing him of crimes against hu­man­i­ty over dead­ly an­ti-drugs crack­downs he over­saw while in of­fice, the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment said.

Live from Vil­lam­or Air­base in Mani­la af­ter for­mer Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Ro­dri­go Duterte was ar­rest­ed by po­lice, ac­cord­ing to the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.

Duterte was tak­en in­to cus­tody at the Mani­la In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port af­ter ar­riv­ing from Hong Kong with his fam­i­ly, be­com­ing the first for­mer Asian leader to be ar­rest­ed by the glob­al court. He was lat­er dri­ven to the near­by Vil­lam­or Air Base. It was un­clear where he would be tak­en next by au­thor­i­ties.

Clad in a dark jack­et, an irate Duterte protest­ed his ar­rest af­ter ar­rival and asked au­thor­i­ties the le­gal ba­sis of his be­ing tak­en in­to cus­tody. His lawyers im­me­di­ate­ly asked the Supreme Court in Mani­la to block any at­tempt to trans­port him out of the Philip­pines to be hand­ed over to the ICC in Eu­rope.

“Show to me now the le­gal ba­sis for my be­ing here,” Duterte asked au­thor­i­ties in re­marks cap­tured on video by his daugh­ter, Veron­i­ca Duterte, who post­ed it on so­cial me­dia. “You have to an­swer now for the de­pri­va­tion of lib­er­ty.

The sur­prise ar­rest sparked a com­mo­tion at the air­port, where lawyers and aides of Duterte loud­ly protest­ed that they, along with a doc­tor and lawyers, were pre­vent­ed from com­ing close to him af­ter he was tak­en in­to po­lice cus­tody. “This is a vi­o­la­tion of his con­sti­tu­tion­al right,” Sen. Bong Go, a close Duterte al­ly, told re­porters.

ICC prob­ing mass killings dur­ing Duterte’s drug crack­down

The ICC has been in­ves­ti­gat­ing mass killings in crack­downs over­seen by Duterte when he served as may­or of the south­ern Philip­pine city of Davao and lat­er as pres­i­dent. Es­ti­mates of the death toll of the crack­down un­der Duterte as pres­i­dent vary, from the more than 6,000 that the na­tion­al po­lice have re­port­ed up to 30,000 claimed by hu­man rights groups.

“Up­on his ar­rival, the pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al served the ICC no­ti­fi­ca­tion for an ar­rest war­rant to the for­mer pres­i­dent for crime against hu­man­i­ty,” the gov­ern­ment said. “He’s now in the cus­tody of au­thor­i­ties.”

The war­rant of ar­rest sent by the ICC to Philip­pine of­fi­cials, a copy of which was seen by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press, said “there are rea­son­able grounds to be­lieve that” the at­tack on vic­tims “was both wide­spread and sys­tem­at­ic: the at­tack took place over a pe­ri­od of sev­er­al years and thou­sands peo­ple ap­pear to have been killed.”

Duterte’s ar­rest was nec­es­sary “to en­sure his ap­pear­ance be­fore the court,” ac­cord­ing to the March 7 war­rant, adding that the for­mer pres­i­dent was ex­pect­ed to ig­nore court sum­mons.

Al­though Duterte is no longer pres­i­dent, he “ap­pears to con­tin­ue to wield con­sid­er­able pow­er,” it said.

“Mind­ful of the re­sul­tant risk of in­ter­fer­ence with the in­ves­ti­ga­tions and the se­cu­ri­ty of wit­ness­es and vic­tims, the cham­ber is sat­is­fied that the ar­rest of Mr. Duterte is nec­es­sary.”

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment on Duterte’s ar­rest from the court or the ICC pros­e­cu­tor’s of­fice in The Hague, Nether­lands.

Fam­i­lies of the slain and Duterte crit­ics cel­e­brate the ar­rest

Duterte’s ar­rest and down­fall stunned fam­i­lies of slain vic­tims of his crack­down and drove some to tears. Some im­me­di­ate­ly gath­ered in a street ral­ly to ex­press their re­lief.

“This is a big, long-await­ed day for jus­tice,” Randy de­los San­tos, the un­cle of a teenag­er gunned down by po­lice in a dark river­side al­ley dur­ing an an­ti-drug op­er­a­tion in sub­ur­ban Caloocan city in Au­gust 2017 in the cap­i­tal re­gion, told the AP.

“Now we feel that jus­tice is rolling. We hope that top po­lice of­fi­cials and the hun­dreds of po­lice of­fi­cers who were in­volved in the il­le­gal killings should al­so be placed in cus­tody and pun­ished,” de­los San­tos said.

Three of the po­lice of­fi­cers who killed his nephew, Kian de­los San­tos, were con­vict­ed in 2018 for the high-pro­file mur­der, which prompt­ed Duterte at the time to tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend his an­ti-drugs crack­down.

The con­vic­tion was one of on­ly around three so far against law en­forcers in­volved in the an­ti-drugs cam­paign, re­flect­ing the con­cerns of fam­i­lies of vic­tims of sus­pect­ed ex­tra­ju­di­cial killings that they would not get jus­tice in the Philip­pines, hence their de­ci­sion to seek the help of the ICC.

For­mer Sen. An­to­nio Tril­lanes, one of the harsh­est crit­ics of Duterte who led the fil­ing of a com­plaint against him be­fore the ICC said the ar­rest was his­toric and a ma­jor blow to state im­puni­ty and tyran­ny any­where in the world.

“This is like the down­fall of an em­per­or,” Tril­lanes told the AP. “The next step now is to make sure that all his fol­low­ers who have com­mit­ted crim­i­nal trans­gres­sions like him should al­so be held to ac­count.”

The gov­ern­ment said the 79-year-old for­mer leader was in good health and was ex­am­ined by gov­ern­ment doc­tors fol­low­ing his ar­rest.

Duterte’s gov­ern­ment tried to head off the ICC in­ves­ti­ga­tion

The ICC be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing drug killings un­der Duterte from Nov. 1, 2011, when he was still may­or of the south­ern city of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as pos­si­ble crimes against hu­man­i­ty. Duterte with­drew the Philip­pines in 2019 from the Rome Statute in a move hu­man rights ac­tivists say was aimed at es­cap­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The Duterte ad­min­is­tra­tion moved to sus­pend the glob­al court’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion in late 2021 by ar­gu­ing that Philip­pine au­thor­i­ties were al­ready look­ing in­to the same al­le­ga­tions, ar­gu­ing the ICC — a court of last re­sort — there­fore didn’t have ju­ris­dic­tion.

Ap­peals judges at the ICC ruled in 2023 the in­ves­ti­ga­tion could re­sume and re­ject­ed the Duterte ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ob­jec­tions. Based in The Hague, the Nether­lands, the ICC can step in when coun­tries are un­will­ing or un­able to pros­e­cute sus­pects in the most heinous in­ter­na­tion­al crimes, in­clud­ing geno­cide, war crimes and crimes against hu­man­i­ty.

Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos Jr., who suc­ceed­ed Duterte in 2022 and be­came en­tan­gled in a bit­ter po­lit­i­cal dis­pute with the for­mer pres­i­dent, has de­cid­ed not to re­join the glob­al court. But the Mar­cos ad­min­is­tra­tion had said it would co­op­er­ate if the ICC asked in­ter­na­tion­al po­lice to take Duterte in­to cus­tody through a so-called Red No­tice, a re­quest for law en­force­ment agen­cies world­wide to lo­cate and tem­porar­i­ly ar­rest a crime sus­pect.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press jour­nal­ists Joeal Calupi­tan and Aaron Fav­i­la in Mani­la, Philip­pines, and Mike Corder and Mol­ly Quell in The Hague, Nether­lands, con­tributed to this re­port.

MANI­LA, Philip­pines (AP) —