Palace: No special arrest for senator
Malacañang has doubled down on its position on the possible arrest of Sen. Ronald dela Rosa as among the coperpetrators of former President Rodrigo Duterte for the crimes against humanity case pending before the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC has not issued a warrant of arrest against the senator yet, but Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin told reporters after President Marcos left for the United States on Sunday that there was no reason to change the way arrests are done under the law.
“We are not going to do things differently, unless the Supreme Court in those pending cases makes a different announcement about how we should proceed,” said Bersamin, who served in the high court for 10 years from 2009 to 2019, the last year as chief justice.
“If there should be a warrant, we will probably do the same thing that we did in the case of the former President (Duterte). [The same goes] if the warrant is coursed through the Interpol because we continue to be a member of the Interpol,” he explained.
According to Bersamin, Duterte’s arrest at that time is in compliance with Republic Act No. 9851, or the “Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity.”
“[In] our judgment, the President’s judgment was that the surrender option [of Duterte to authorities] was the better one,” he said.
“There is nothing discriminatory that we will ever undertake. We are always very clear about that. We are not the ones who will make politically-motivated actions, or those attributions to us that we are unfair,” he added.
Bersamin was among the three Cabinet officials—along with Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III—appointed as caretakers of the government while the President is on his official visit to the United States from July 20 to July 22.
Duterte was arrested on March 11 by operatives of the Philippine National Police and Interpol under a warrant of arrest issued by the ICC.
On the same night, Duterte was flown and detained at The Hague, where he is set to stand trial for crimes against humanity in relation to the extrajudicial killings as part of his war on drugs when he was mayor of Davao City and later on as president.
The case looked into the killings spanning the years from 2011 to 2019 when the Philippines was still part of the Rome Statute.
But before Duterte’s arrest, the Interpol released a diffusion notice, which was “transmitted after prior consultations with the government of the Philippines, [which] have agreed to comply with this request for arrest.”
A March 13 ICC document on his case showed he had several “coconspirators,” but their names were redacted.
