ICC says no arrest order vs Bato; but DILG readies 10K cops
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has not issued new arrest warrants in connection with the drug war killings under the Duterte administration, a spokesperson for The Hague-based tribunal said on Saturday.
In Manila, reports on Saturday quoting “unidentified sources” said that an arrest warrant had been issued against Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, a former national police chief and one of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s “coperpetrators” in his crimes against humanity case in the ICC for the thousands killed in his drug war.
“No public arrest warrants have been issued in relation to the situation in the Philippines,” ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet told reporters in a message.
Pressed to clarify whether a warrant exists, but had not been made public, Maillet said: “We cannot speculate on these matters or on any confidential information.”
According to the Saturday morning reports, the arrest warrant was supposed to be coursed through the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), as was done when Duterte was arrested in March last year and flown to the Netherlands, where he was transferred to the ICC in The Hague.
The Department of Justice, for its part, also said on Saturday that it had no information on the reported planned arrest of the senator, who has been in hiding since November when word spread of his looming arrest. He has been absent from Senate sessions since then.
Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla told the Inquirer that he had received only “unverified information” about the supposed warrant against Dela Rosa.
‘Dragnet’ prepared
The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), which he heads, however, was preparing a 10,000-strong task force for possible “dragnet” operations to catch Dela Rosa if an arrest warrant had indeed been issued against Duterte’s first Philippine National Police chief, he said.
Remulla said the task force was still being organized.
“We are forming it,” he said. “The unverified info just arrived this morning. It takes time to mobilize.”
Dela Rosa is in the Davao region, according to Remulla without providing specific details of his location.
A dragnet operation is a large-scale police or security operation where authorities deploy personnel across multiple areas at the same time to locate or arrest a suspect.
PNP chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said that any possible action against his former superior would be carried out legally.
“The PNP emphasizes that it acts only upon lawful orders issued by competent authorities and in accordance with existing laws, rules, and procedures,” Nartatez said in a statement.
“Any appropriate police action, if and when necessary, shall be undertaken with full adherence to due process, the rule of law, and respect for human rights,” he added.
Human rights lawyer Kristina Conti, whose practice is recognized by the ICC, earlier told the Inquirer that Dela Rosa and other former high-ranking police officers could face a different set of crimes against humanity charges, specifically imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty, for questionable arrests during the implementation of the drug war.
Their charges, however, would be separate from the case against Duterte and would not stall the trial proceedings against him, she noted.
Coperpetrators
Since the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) I publicly released the document containing charges (DCC) from the prosecution last year, speculations spread that more arrest warrants would be issued for the coperpetrators.
Other coperpetrators named in the case against Duterte were former Davao City police chiefs Vicente Danao and Isidro Lapeña; and former PNP chiefs Oscar Albayalde and Camilo Cascolan.
The others were Sen. Christopher “Bong” Go; former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II and former National Bureau of Investigation director Dante Gierran.
On the third day of the pretrial hearing in February, lead defense counsel Nicholas Kaufman said the recorded deaths in antidrug operations were merely “a fraction” of the 118,287 total arrests for the period of July 2016 to Nov. 2017.
Conti said Kaufman affirmed that there were other human rights violations during the implementation of Duterte’s antinarcotics campaign. The number of drug-related arrests rose by 300,000 by the end of the Duterte administration, she said, citing government data.
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