A subpoena has been issued by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group against Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, ordering the fugitive lawmaker to present himself at the PNP’s Camp Crame headquarters in Quezon City on May 14.
The subpoena duces tecum, dated May 10 and signed by CIDG Director Robert Morico II, sets a 10 a.m. hearing at the CIDG office. Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla confirmed its issuance on Monday, citing a copy of the document obtained by the Inquirer.
Servers were directed to attempt delivery at three locations: Room 518 and Room 11 of the GSIS Building along Diokno Boulevard in Pasay City, a Monteritz subdivision address in Davao City, and Barangay Bato in Santa Cruz, Davao del Sur.
The probe centers on alleged extrajudicial killings in Davao during Dela Rosa’s time as the city’s police chief and later as regional police director. Under the subpoena, Dela Rosa is required to provide a sworn statement or affidavit and submit all documents and materials relevant to the investigation.
The order carries a legal warning: non-compliance without sufficient justification “shall be a ground for the filing of a case for Indirect Contempt of Court,” citing Republic Act No. 10973. That law, signed by former President Rodrigo Duterte in 2018, gives the PNP chief and senior CIDG officials the authority to compel witnesses through subpoena.
Remulla has maintained that the CIDG investigation is a “purely internal matter” unrelated to the International Criminal Court. Separately, the interior secretary said the Department of the Interior and Local Government had been readying a 10,000-strong task force for possible dragnet operations in the event a confirmed ICC arrest warrant is issued against Dela Rosa.
The warrant question has remained unsettled. Ombudsman Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla announced as early as November 8, 2025 that the ICC had issued such a warrant, but other government officials said they had not received formal documentation. ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet said on Saturday that “no public arrest warrants have been issued in relation to the situation in the Philippines.”
Dela Rosa’s last appearance at Senate plenary sessions was on November 10 last year. He has remained out of public view since then, with speculation mounting over his potential arrest tied to his role as PNP chief from 2016 to 2018 — the period during which Duterte’s anti-drug campaign resulted in thousands of deaths.
Official government figures place the death toll from the drug war at a minimum of 6,000, while human rights organizations and the ICC prosecutor put the estimate between 12,000 and 30,000 from 2016 to 2019. Dela Rosa has been named by the court as an alleged co-perpetrator alongside Duterte in those killings.
Duterte himself was arrested on March 12, 2025 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport and has since been held at a detention facility in The Hague. The Philippines formally withdrew from the Rome Statute in March 2018, but the withdrawal only took effect a year later — leaving the ICC with jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed in the country between November 1, 2011, and March 16, 2019.
