Eighteen months after his arrest at Manila’s international airport, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made his first in-person appearance before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where he has been detained since March 2025. The 81-year-old, who is facing charges of crimes against humanity stemming from his signature anti-drug campaign, arrived at the court on Wednesday dressed in a dark suit and untucked white shirt.
Duterte, who led the Philippines from 2016 to 2022, launched a brutal nationwide war on drugs immediately after taking office, which rights groups and ICC investigators say resulted in the extrajudicial killing of tens of thousands of low-level drug suspects and small-time dealers. The court’s investigation into the killings spans more than seven years, starting in November 2011 when Duterte served as mayor of the major southern city Davao, and ending in March 2016 when Duterte withdrew the Philippines’ membership from the ICC.
Prior to this week’s hearing, Duterte had only appeared remotely before the court and had repeatedly skipped scheduled in-person proceedings, with his legal team arguing that his declining health leaves him unfit to participate in a full trial. Wednesday’s status hearing was called specifically to address the defense’s claims that Duterte lives with severe memory impairment that prevents him from collaborating effectively with his legal team. Prosecutors have pushed back against this claim, disputing that Duterte is unfit to stand trial. The former president first disclosed his diagnosis of myasthenia gravis — an autoimmune disorder that causes nerve and muscle dysfunction — back in 2019, when he was still in office. When he was elected in 2016 at the age of 71, he was the oldest candidate ever to win the Philippine presidency.
Duterte’s appearance at the ICC comes as his political dynasty is locked in a high-stakes power struggle that reshaped the country’s political landscape and cleared the path for his arrest. The alliance between the Duterte and Marcos political families, which delivered a landslide election victory for incumbent President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in 2022, has collapsed in a very public feud between Marcos and Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. That falling-out, which fractured the ruling coalition, is widely seen as having enabled the arrest of the former president in 2025.
Sara Duterte, currently the frontrunner in polling for the 2028 presidential election (for which Marcos is constitutionally barred from seeking a second term), is also fighting for her own political future. She is currently undergoing an impeachment trial on charges that include misappropriation of public funds and making threats to assassinate President Marcos, First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, Marcos’ cousin. If convicted in the impeachment proceeding, she will be permanently disqualified from holding any public office, ending her presidential bid before the 2028 campaign even begins. Duterte’s formal trial on the ICC charges is currently scheduled to begin in November.