MANILA  -  Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos said Monday he would not hand his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte to the International Crimi­nal Court, which is investigating his deadly drug war. Thousands of people have been killed in the anti-narcotics campaign start­ed by Duterte in 2016 and continued under Marcos. Asked Monday if he would hand Duterte -- who has accused him of being a drug addict and criticised his policies -- to the ICC if it issued a warrant for his arrest, Marcos said “no”. “We don’t recognise the warrant that they will send to us. That’s a no,” he said at a forum with the Foreign Cor­respondents Association of the Philippines.

“We are well within international law when we take the position of not recognis­ing the jurisdiction of the ICC in the Philip­pines,” Marcos said. Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the ICC in 2019 after the Hague-based tribunal started probing alle­gations of human rights abuses committed during his drug war.

It launched a formal inquiry into Duterte’s crackdown in September 2021, only to sus­pend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.

The ICC’s chief prosecutor later asked to reopen the inquiry, and pre-trial judges at the court eventually gave the green light in late January 2023 -- a decision that Manila appealed shortly afterwards and lost. More than 6,000 people were killed in anti-drug operations under Duterte, according to of­ficial data released by the Philippines. ICC prosecutors estimate the death toll at be­tween 12,000 and 30,000.