Rumors that Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa had been seized by authorities and flown out of the country for surrender to the International Criminal Court do not hold up, Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla said Wednesday, insisting the senator remains beyond the reach of the officers pursuing him.
Speaking to reporters in Quezon City, Remulla moved to shut down the chatter head-on. “There has been a lot of speculation na nahuli siya and he’s being whisked away to the Hague. Hindi po totoo yan,” he said.
The interior chief described a search still very much in motion rather than one that has closed. “Nag-coordinate na po kami sa DOJ (Department of Justice). Nag-coordinate ang DILG, lahat ng law enforcement units, but Bato is still being hunted down,” he said.
Dela Rosa is wanted under an ICC warrant tied to the mass killings of the anti-drug campaign waged during Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, a period when the former national police chief oversaw the operations that human rights groups say left thousands dead. The Pre-Trial Chamber’s warrant accuses him of helping assemble a network of officers who carried out systematic killings, charges he has consistently rejected.
Remulla’s denial lands one day after National Bureau of Investigation Director Melvin Matibag pushed back against a nearly identical wave of rumors. Asked Tuesday whether his agency had taken the senator into custody, Matibag answered simply, “Hindi. Sa amin, wala,” according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and maintained that the operation to find Dela Rosa was still active.
Investigators continue to work from the premise that the senator has not managed to slip past the country’s borders. Matibag has argued that flight abroad would only compound Dela Rosa’s exposure, since the arrest order carries weight across the roughly 120 states party to the Rome Statute.
The senator dropped out of sight in the early hours of May 14, leaving the Senate complex alongside Sen. Robin Padilla after a brief reappearance that followed months away from the chamber. He had been sheltering under the Senate’s protective custody until that departure, and no verified public sighting of him has surfaced since.
Officials have acknowledged that Dela Rosa’s own background in policing has made him a difficult target. Remulla has said in recent weeks that the fugitive’s command of law enforcement methods has forced trackers to abandon conventional approaches in favor of what he termed asymmetric tactics, and that the same problem applies to former Bureau of Corrections chief Gerald Bantag, who has likewise eluded capture.
The manhunt gained legal footing after the Supreme Court turned aside Dela Rosa’s bid for a temporary restraining order against the warrant, clearing the way for the Department of Justice to instruct both the police and the NBI to enforce it. Before the tribunal ruled, authorities had held off out of deference to the Senate as a co-equal branch and to the legal remedies the senator was pursuing.
