Senator Imee Marcos has called on the Senate to conduct an “urgent investigation” on the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte.
In a statement released on Monday, March 17, Marcos said, “It is imperative to establish whether due process was followed and to ensure that [Duterte’s] legal rights were not just upheld but protected, especially given the involvement of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).”
The Committee on Foreign Relations, chaired by Marcos, will launch its investigation on Thursday, March 20.
She has invited officials from the Philippine National Police, Department of Transportation Office for Transportation Security (OTS-DOTr), Department of Justice, Department of Foreign Affairs, National Security Council, and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) to serve as resource speakers and witnesses.
She also said the Senate must “uphold the country’s jurisdiction” and clarify policies concerning national law enforcement agencies and international tribunals. “Our sovereignty and legal processes must remain paramount,” she added.
The senatorial re-electionist previously expressed dismay over the former president’s arrest. On Friday, March 14, she skipped the Alyansa para sa Bagong Pilipinas campaign rally in Tacloban City, Leyte, the Visayas bailiwick of the Marcos-Romualdez clans.
Duterte was arrested on March 11 through a warrant issued by the ICC, which investigated deaths linked to the war on drugs under his administration as Philippine president and Davao City mayor.
The legality of the arrest remains in contention as Duterte withdrew the country from the ICC in March 2019. The ICC maintains that it has jurisdiction over “crimes allegedly committed in the Philippines while the country was a state party to the [Rome] Statute,” or the treaty establishing the ICC and its members. As such, it only investigated extrajudicial killings committed from November 1, 2011 to March 16, 2019, the period of the Philippines’ ICC membership.
Duterte is currently in the ICC’s detention center in the Hague, Netherlands. He had his initial hearing on Friday and is set for another pre-trial hearing on September 23 this year. He is also seeking a re-election as Davao City mayor in the upcoming elections.
