At that point legality doesn’t really matter. This is just how “traditional” Philippine politicians are, especially the powerful dynasties in the provinces. Duterte is one of the worst, but he’s certainly not the only one here.

So this is part of the reason why the ICC arrest is very much important to us (not everyone, since the guy has a huge following, sadly). He will never be prosecuted here. The hope is that an outside enforcer will properly prosecute and actually lock him and his cronies up for good.

Comment by apt is right. There have also been numerous cases where teens were killed for no reason and put under the war on drugs killings.

These happened while he was president. But he was a long-time mayor of Davao City, where he had a death squad. I assume I don’t have to outline the implications of a mayor having his own death squad.

Filipino here. For some of us, this is a huge step towards justice for the victims of the killings when he was in power. We can’t really expect the PHL govt to do something like this given how sketchy it is, so to some people the ICC is the only hope.

He brags about many crimes then says he never did anything whenever convenient.