Philippine senator outruns agents in ICC arrest drama

MANILA, Philippines >> The federal agents were waiting at the Philippine Senate to serve an arrest warrant. Their target was a lawmaker.

But the lawmaker ran, and the agents gave chase. He dashed up flights of stairs and through doors, stumbling at one point. A couple of minutes later, he was in the safety of the Senate chamber, where the would-be arresting officers had no authority.

This extraordinary scene was captured on closed-circuit television and shown during a plenary session of the Senate on Monday. The senator in question was Ronald dela Rosa, who was the chief enforcer in former President Rodrigo Duterte’s devastating anti-drug campaign. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity, the same charge that it arrested Duterte for last year.

For now, dela Rosa, 64 — whose nickname is “Bato,” or rock in Tagalog — is holed up in the Senate.

“I am well rested and have already recovered from the adrenaline rush yesterday,” he said in a text message today. “The next steps are to exhaust all legal remedies. We are already filing all the necessary petitions.”

Dela Rosa’s lawyers are petitioning the Supreme Court to invalidate the warrant. The ICC has accused him of being responsible, along with Duterte and others, of multiple killings when he was Davao City’s police director and later chief of the Philippine National Police. He has previously denied the charges.

For months, dela Rosa had not appeared in public, amid speculation that the ICC had issued a warrant for him. He arrived at the Senate on Monday, as the latest episode of the acrimonious rivalry between President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte, the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, unfolded.

On Monday evening, the House of Representatives impeached Sara Duterte again. But by then, an ally of Duterte had been elected as the new Senate president, making Duterte’s prosecution on impeachment charges almost certain to fail, as did her first impeachment.

Marcos and Duterte, both scions of powerful political families, formed a partnership ahead of the general election in 2022. But their alliance quickly frayed and hit rock bottom after Marcos complied with an ICC warrant for Rodrigo Duterte last March.

The warrant for dela Rosa was issued by the ICC in November but was unsealed Monday. He has argued, like Duterte has, that the ICC has no jurisdiction in the Philippines because Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the treaty that created the court.

Still, dela Rosa has publicly said that he was willing to be arrested and join Duterte in prison. On Monday, he sought protective custody from the Senate, which granted his request.

“Senator Bato will enjoy the protection of the law and the protection of the Senate in accordance with our rules and Philippine laws,” said the new Senate president, Alan Cayetano.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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