ICC Charges Former Philippines President with Crimes Against Humanity 

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors charged former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte with three counts of crimes against humanity, accusing him of involvement in at least 76 murders during his “war on drugs,” Agence France-Presse reported. 

A heavily redacted charge sheet dated from July but only made public on Monday detailed the accusations against the 80-year-old former president, who has been in custody at the ICC detention center in The Hague since early March, when he was arrested at Manila airport on an ICC warrant. 

ICC deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang said Duterte was an “indirect co-perpetrator” in the murders, which the court believes were carried out by others, including police, the BBC wrote. 

One count refers to Duterte’s alleged participation as a co-perpetrator in 19 murders carried out between 2013 and 2016, when he was mayor of Davao City, southern Philippines. Another concerns 14 murders of so-called “High Value Targets” across the country in 2016 and 2017 when Duterte was president of the country and started his war on drugs. 

And yet another relates to the murder and attempted murder of 45 people in so-called “clearance” operations targeting lower-level alleged drug users or dealers. According to prosecutors, these were carried out across the Philippines between 2016 and 2018. 

The charges against the former president are rooted in his years-long campaign against drug users and dealers that killed more than 6,000 people. He has said it was necessary to free the country from street crimes.   

Civil rights groups, meanwhile, believe the true tally of victims – often held or killed without a trial – could be in the tens of thousands. 

The prosecutors filed these charges just before Duterte was expected to appear at the ICC in a proceeding that was postponed while the court decides whether Duterte is fit to stand trial due to poor health. 

The ICC has been the center of controversy lately, with the US targeting its judges and prosecutors with sanctions because it indicted Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as figures from the Hamas militant group, for alleged war crimes committed during the Gaza war. 

Sources told Reuters this week that the US is now considering “entity sanctions” to take effect as soon as this week, which would put the court’s day-to-day operations in jeopardy, from its ability to pay its staff, to its access to bank accounts and routine office software on its computers. 

The US and Israel are not members of the ICC.  

Meanwhile, three junta-led West African nations in the Sahel region – Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – announced their withdrawal from the court this week, describing it as a “tool of neocolonial repression,” Africanews added. 

The three had already withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (or ECOWAS) and instead, formed the Alliance of Sahel States. They said the ICC is targeting weaker states while ignoring others and expressed the intention to set up “indigenous mechanisms” for justice and accountability that will be more closely aligned with their national values and claims of sovereignty. 

Human rights groups are concerned that the move might reduce international oversight of alleged human rights abuses, especially in conflict zones.