The legal counsel of Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa has pushed back against Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla’s claim that the government is negotiating with the senator’s “powerful protectors,” calling it unfortunate that talk of “body bags” and bloodshed has entered public discourse over a sitting lawmaker.
In a statement dated September 8, 2026, the defense team said it took note of remarks attributed to Remulla that the government knows Dela Rosa’s whereabouts, that negotiations are underway with his protectors, and that the situation “involves body bags” because the secretary does not want bloodshed. The counsel said it has no personal knowledge of any such protectors, describing Dela Rosa instead as a prayerful man whose only protector is “Almighty God.”
The statement was a direct response to Remulla, who said in a One News interview that authorities knew where the senator was but were in talks with “very powerful people” shielding him. Dela Rosa, a former Philippine National Police chief, has been in hiding since May, when he made a sudden Senate appearance amid a leadership change before dropping out of sight. The Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation have been searching for him to serve an International Criminal Court arrest warrant tied to his alleged role in former President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug campaign. The warrant, unsealed in May 2026, accuses him of the crime against humanity of murder involving at least 32 people killed between 2016 and 2018.
The counsel argued that if the government believes Dela Rosa committed offenses under Philippine law, the proper course is to bring cases before Philippine courts rather than devote state resources to apprehending a Filipino citizen for surrender to a foreign tribunal. While maintaining respect for Remulla, the team appealed to him to use his influence with President Marcos to reconsider what it called the policy of facilitating surrenders to the ICC.
The defense stressed that its statement was not a call to evade accountability, but a demand that accountability be pursued under the Constitution and before Philippine courts — “not through rhetoric about ‘body bags’ or the specter of bloodshed.”
The Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019, and the Marcos administration has given shifting signals on cooperation, complicating the legal standoff that has kept Dela Rosa a fugitive for months.
