Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte is on his way to the Netherlands and is set to be handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), hours after he was arrested on a warrant in Manila over a "war on drugs" that defined his presidency.
Philippine's President Ferdinand Marcos Jr confirmed the flight after it left the country's airspace on Tuesday night, local time.
"The plane is en route to The Hague in the Netherlands allowing the former president to face charges of crimes against humanity in relation to his bloody war on drugs," Mr Marcos Jr. said.
Mr Duterte was arrested in the Philippines earlier on Tuesday after arriving from Hong Kong and police took him into custody on orders of the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity.
The court has been investigating the former president's deadly "war on drugs" that killed thousands of Filipinos.
"I am confident the arrest was proper, correct and followed all necessary legal procedures," Mr Marcos Jr told a press conference confirming Duterte had left the country bound for the Netherlands.
"We did not help the International Criminal Court in any way. The arrest was made in compliance with Interpol."
Mr Duterte could become Asia's first former head of state to go on trial at the ICC.
The surprise arrest sparked a commotion at the airport, where lawyers and aides of Mr 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.
"You have to answer now for the deprivation of liberty," Mr Duterte said in a video posted by local media outlet GMA news, which was said to have been supplied by his youngest daughter, Veronica Duterte.
It was unclear who the former president was speaking to in the video.
In remarks streamed live on Instagram by his youngest daughter while in custody and prior to boarding, Mr Duterte said he should face trial in the Philippines and not at the ICC.
"If I committed a sin, prosecute me in Philippine courts," he told police officers while in custody in Manila.
The government said the 79-year-old former leader was in good health and was examined by government doctors before leaving the Philippines.
Families relieved at Duterte arrest
"This is a big, long-awaited day for justice," Randy delos Santos, the uncle of a teenager killed by police during an anti-drug operation in August 2017 in the Manila metropolis said.
"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," Mr 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 Mr Duterte at the time to temporarily suspend his brutal anti-drugs crackdown.
Mr Duterte had said on Monday in Hong Kong that he was ready to be arrested if the ICC issued a warrant and has repeatedly defended the anti-drugs crackdown.
He has denied ordering police to kill drug suspects unless in self-defence.
Lawyer argues ICC warrant invalid
Mr Duterte's former legal counsel Salvador Panelo said the arrest was unlawful, and said the police did not allow one of his lawyers to meet Mr Duterte at the airport.
He also argued the ICC warrant was invalid for a number of reasons.
"It's illegal because the warrant of arrest issued by the foreign court, the International Criminal Court, is without legal authority simply because the ICC has no jurisdiction over this country," Mr Panelo told the ABC.
"We have a legal system robustly functioning. We have prosecuted criminals. We have prosecuted presidents.
"But the fact is there is no need for a foreign court to come in and prosecute those they perceive to be criminals. So on the basis of that, the court cannot issue any warrant of arrests against any citizen of this country because it has no jurisdiction."
However, testimony the ICC gathered from victims alleges the Philippines government failed to properly investigate the killings during the war on drugs.
"The general consensus … is that there are no genuine investigations, completed or ongoing, from the Philippine government and its agents," court documents state.
"[Redacted] stated that their case was not investigated or was only limited to the perfunctory taking of statements around the time of the killing.
"This puts into question the genuineness of the government's intentions to investigate and prosecute incidents related to the campaign against illegal drugs."
The ICC began investigating drug killings under Mr Duterte from November 1, 2011, when he was still mayor of the southern city of Davao, to March 16, 2019, as possible crimes against humanity.
During his presidency, a nationwide drug war killed at least 6,284 accused drug dealers and users, by government count.
The ICC estimates that somewhere between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed between July 2016 and March 2019.
Philippine authorities have always denied there were extrajudicial killings. Many of those killed were said to have died in shootouts.
But rights groups and others say that Philippine police and vigilantes under their direction murdered unarmed drug suspects on a massive scale under Mr Duterte's watch.
Mr 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 — did not have jurisdiction.
Appeals judges at the ICC ruled in 2023 the investigation could resume and rejected the Duterte administration's objections.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who succeeded Mr 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 has said it would cooperate if the ICC asks international police to take Mr Duterte into custody through a so-called Red Notice, a request for law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and temporarily arrest a crime suspect.
The war on drugs has continued under the current administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
ABC/wires
