Ex-Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte threatened a police general with lawsuits, refused to be fingerprinted and told law enforcers “you have to kill me to bring me to The Hague” in a tense confrontation after his arrest in Manila that was ordered by the International Criminal Court, a Philippine police general said on Thursday.
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Police Major General Nicolas Torre provided details for the first time of Tuesday’s 12-hour stand-off at a Philippine airbase before he and other police officers managed to bring the 79-year-old former leader onto a government-chartered jet that took him to The Hague, Netherlands, where he was detained by the global court on charges of crimes against humanity.
ICC spokesman Fadi El Abdallah said on Thursday in a text message to reporters that Duterte had arrived at the court’s detention centre near the Dutch North Sea coast after undergoing medical checks.
The court announced late on Thursday that Duterte is scheduled to make his first appearance before ICC judges on Friday. At the hearing he will be informed of the charges against him, read his rights and a date will be set for a further pretrial hearing.
Duterte was once feared for his brutal anti-crime crackdowns and reviled for his irreverence while in office – he called Pope Francis a “son of a bitch” at one time and said that US president Barack Obama could “go to hell”.
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Duterte’s stunning reversal of fortune has been celebrated by human rights groups as a historic triumph against state impunity, while his supporters have slammed what they call the current government’s surrendering of a rival to a court whose jurisdiction they dispute.