Duterte camp says ICC arrest order ‘worthless’

MANILA, Philippines — The prospect of being ordered arrested this year by the International Criminal Court doesn’t worry former president Rodrigo Duterte, as any arrest warrant the UN-backed ICC might issue would be “worthless and useless,” his camp said yesterday.

In separate text messages to The STAR, former Duterte officials – executive secretary Salvador Medialdea, presidential spokesman Harry Roque, and chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo – said reports on an impending issuance of arrest warrants by the ICC should not be taken seriously as President Marcos himself had ruled out cooperating with the court.

But in an interview with “Storycon” on One News yesterday, Roque said he has credible information that the Marcos administration did not stop ICC investigators from entering the country.

He also found it disturbing that the administration has refused to put in writing its commitment not to cooperate with the ICC.

“We know when the ICC investigators came into the Philippines, which already is a violation of our sovereignty. We know that they were not prevented from investigating,” Roque told Storycon.

On Thursday, also in an interview with Storycon, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV – a staunch Duterte critic – said the ICC is expected to issue arrest warrants by midyear against Duterte and later in batches for his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte and several other individuals.

The ICC is investigating the deaths of thousands of suspected drug offenders in the conduct of the former president’s war on drugs.

Panelo said assuming that Trillanes’ pronouncements were true, such arrest orders were worthless and should be ignored considering that Marcos had already reaffirmed his predecessor’s position that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines.

“The discredited renegade just wants publicity for himself. He has become totally irrelevant,” Panelo said, referring to Trillanes.

He maintained that Marcos had “emphatically declared that our government will not cooperate, in whatever form or shape, with the ICC.”

Medialdea, meanwhile, said the ICC has become a “recurring” issue “every time an issue as big as the PDEA agent’s revelation