The Attorney General of the Philippines has urged the Supreme Court to reject a legal attempt by fugitive Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa to block his arrest and extradition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
On May 11, the ICC unsealed a November 6 arrest warrant for Dela Rosa, charging him with crimes against humanity linked to former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs.” Dela Rosa then fled to his Senate office, before slipping out of the building before dawn on Thursday. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
The senator also filed three petitions with the Supreme Court, asking it to prevent authorities from arresting him and handing him over to the ICC.
In a 74-page commentary filed Saturday and made public yesterday, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) described Dela Rosa as a “fugitive” and argued his candidacy had no legal basis.
The OSG said the Philippines “will never become a sanctuary of impunity for the narrow and universally condemned class of atrocities known as crimes against humanity,” and added that the country can execute the ICC arrest warrant under a domestic law, Republic Act 9851, which allows authorities to surrender suspects accused of serious international crimes to international courts for prosecution.
He said Dela Rosa was not entitled to relief because his “actions show he comes to court with unclean hands.”
“His escape, coupled with the fact that he had previously gone into hiding, is not merely accidental but constitutes a deliberate act aimed at avoiding responsibility,” the OSG added. “His conduct places him squarely within the definition of a fugitive from justice.”
Dela Rosa is wanted by the ICC for his leading role in the anti-drug campaign that raged throughout Duterte’s six years in office (2016-2022). Official estimates of the number of people killed during the campaign range from around 6,000 to 30,000.
If arrested, he will join his former boss, Duterte, who was arrested in March 2025 and extradited to the ICC for his role in the campaign. The 81-year-old former president faces trial after a preliminary commission ruled last month that there were “substantial grounds” to believe he was guilty of crimes against humanity. Dela Rosa had long been expected to be next in line, and before last week’s dramatic events, he hadn’t appeared in public since November.
The standoff over Dela Rosa is the latest episode in the serial political feud between Duterte’s family and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his former ally, which has raged since the two political clans broke up sometime in 2024.
Indeed, Dela Rosa resurfaced on May 11 to vote in favor of a “leadership coup” in the Senate that removed the speaker of the chamber and replaced him with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, a Dutertes ally.
This came on the same day that Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, was impeached for the second time by a House of Representatives dominated by Marcos allies. She is accused of a long list of alleged transgressions, including corruption, misuse of government funds and plotting to kill Marcos, his wife and her cousin, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, during a live broadcast in November 2024.
It is widely believed that the Senate “coup” was aimed at blocking or defeating Duterte’s upcoming impeachment trial, which is expected to take place in the Senate soon. If impeached by a two-thirds vote, Duterte would be removed from office and banned from politics for life, although Duterte is likely to have enough allies in the upper house to prevent a conviction.
The impeachment fight will now likely play out alongside the government’s attempt to enforce the ICC arrest warrant for Dela Rosa, which Justice Minister Fredderick Vida said Friday the country would “certainly” honor. The latter situation certainly would not have occurred without the deterioration of relations between the Marcoses and Duterte, who successfully teamed up for the 2022 presidential election.
After coming to power, Marcos initially asked the ICC to drop charges against Duterte and claimed that it had no jurisdiction over the Philippines, but as his relationship with Duterte deteriorated, he reconsidered his opposition to the case. When the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Duterte in February 2025, it authorized police to execute it, effectively removing a key political rival from the fray. He also hopes that Dela Rosa’s arrest and extradition will help weaken the Duterte camp ahead of the 2028 presidential election, for which Sara Duterte has already declared her candidacy.
However, even that would not be enough to permanently end the political feud that has dominated Philippine politics for the past two years. As long as Sara Duterte survives her impeachment trial, she will focus her energies on the 2028 elections – and the possibility of raining vengeance on her enemies at the presidential office in Malacañang Palace.