MANILA – The camp of former President Rodrigo Duterte had been preparing for his possible arrest by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as early as 2023, according to former presidential spokesperson Harry Roque.
Roque said in an interview with Bilyonaryo News Channel’s At The Forefront program on Tuesday that a petition for certiorari was drafted in December 2023 yet, anticipating that the Marcos administration would initiate cooperation with ICC for Duterte’s arrest.
“The issue of cooperation needed to be questioned through certiorari because it’s grave abuse of discretion in the first place to cooperate where there is no more duty to cooperate,” Roque said.
Roque explained that, under the Rome Statute, a state that is not a party to the ICC has no binding obligation to cooperate with the court but has the discretion to do so.
Roque also stated that the Marcos administration knew about their prepared petitions hence the immediate extradition of Duterte to The Hague in the Netherlands on March 11.
“I’m sure of it, that’s why they did not waste time in putting him in a private jet and bringing him as soon as possible to The Hague because they wanted to avoid judicial review,” he said.
He added: “(Duterte’s) certiorari petition not being dismissed (by the Supreme Court) gives us hope that they will recognize the weight of distinguishing domestic law from international law.”
Meanwhile, Roque also stated that ICC might have forced the arrest of Duterte to debunk allegations of racial bias against people of color after some African countries are reportedly thinking of withdrawing from the ICC due to observations that they only try black people.
“I was told by the African Union that they were really at the brink of, as an entire block, withdrawing from the ICC because they felt there was a bias against black people… that the ICC was only trying Africans. They needed to try someone else other than a black person and that turned out to be Rodrigo Roa Duterte,” Roque said.
“It was an existential issue to have someone other than an African be brought to the court for trial,” he added, referring to a report that, out of the 54 individuals indicted by the ICC to date, 47 are African./PN
