Investigators tracking Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa have built promising leads on where the fugitive senator is hiding and are holding off until conditions favor a clean arrest, the National Bureau of Investigation said.
The disclosure came from NBI Director Melvin Matibag during the Saturday News Forum in Quezon City. He said the bureau’s agents have kept up the search since Dela Rosa dropped out of public view in May, and that the effort has produced information the NBI considers reliable.
Matibag declined to spell out what those leads contain, saying premature details could compromise the operation. Rather than move immediately on what investigators have gathered, he said the bureau is waiting for the right moment to take the senator into custody. He offered no timeframe for when that might happen and stopped short of describing an arrest as imminent, though he expressed confidence in the direction the case is heading.
Dela Rosa is wanted under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, which has identified him as a co-perpetrator in the alleged crimes against humanity tied to the Duterte administration’s anti-drug campaign. He served as chief of the Philippine National Police from 2016 to 2018, the early years of that campaign.
The senator ended a monthslong absence with a surprise appearance at the Senate on May 11, where he cast a vote in the leadership contest that removed Vicente “Tito” Sotto III and elevated Alan Peter Cayetano to the Senate presidency. He was one of 13 senators who backed Cayetano. Days later, in the early hours of May 14, Dela Rosa slipped out of the Senate complex, evading NBI agents who had attempted to serve the ICC warrant during his time under the chamber’s protective custody.
