Prosecutors of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague have identified Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II in a redacted pre-confirmation brief detailing the charges against detained former President Rodrigo Duterte.
The 78-page document, signed by ICC Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang, explained that Duterte faces three counts of murder and attempted murder as crimes against humanity. It linked him to 49 incidents of killings during his years as Davao City mayor and Philippine president, though prosecutors stressed that the number “does not reflect the actual scale of victimization.”
Dela Rosa, then chief of the Philippine National Police, was singled out for his role in scaling up the so-called Davao model of the drug war. The brief noted his remarks weeks before Duterte assumed office: “If someone fights back, they’ll die. If nobody fights back, we’ll make them fight back.” He also signed Command Memorandum Circular No. 16-2016, which formally launched Project “Double Barrel” nationwide.
Court records cited him as saying: “Killings in the name of drugs. This is really about killings in the name of drugs. So you drug lords out there, get ready because I’ll crush you.”
Lawyer Kristina Conti, part of the team that filed the complaint, underscored the significance of the ICC’s findings. “The briefer indeed mentions the key role of Dela Rosa. And for me, it is clear that it lays out Dela Rosa as a co-perpetrator alongside Duterte,” she said.
Aguirre was also mentioned for echoing the administration’s tough stance, allegedly stating that the program was “to do everything to stop drugs, crimes, and corruption” and that “we will choose to kill these drug lords.” He has since denied making the statement attributed to him.
Meanwhile, the ICC and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) pushed back against Vice President Sara Duterte’s claim that Philippine Embassy officials in The Hague “abused” visitation rules when checking on her father.
ICC spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah clarified that any visit inside the detention facility requires the detainee’s approval or request, consistent with the Rome Statute. The DFA also issued a statement confirming that embassy staff conducted a welfare check, describing it as standard procedure for all Filipinos detained overseas under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.
