Philippines vows to hand fugitive senator to ICC following shootout

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The Philippines has pledged to cooperate with a request from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to detain a prominent politician who evaded arrest earlier this week as he fled the Senate building despite efforts by the army to arrest him and reports of gunfire.

Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida said on Friday that Manila had received the court’s arrest warrant for Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the country’s former national police chief, and considers it valid.

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The ICC unsealed the warrant against dela Rosa, 64, on Monday, on charges of crimes against humanity. The former police chief was instrumental in leading former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war, in which thousands of people were targeted in extrajudicial killings.

“We will definitely submit to the request of the ICC,” Vida told reporters, noting that authorities are waiting for the Philippine Supreme Court to resolve the senator’s petition against its legality.

Senate shootout

News of the ICC’s impending warrant in November had seen dela Rosa disappear from public life. However, he emerged on Monday, when he intended to cast the deciding vote in a leadership contest that would have handed power to a Duterte ally.

Finding law enforcement agents waiting for him, the former police chief – who has denied any involvement in the killings, which took place in 2016 – 2019, fortified himself in the Senate building.

Two days later, the Senate was shaken by more than a dozen gunshots as armed soldiers charged up the stairs of the legislative building to try to arrest him.

It was not clear who fired the shots, but by Thursday, the Senate president confirmed that dela Rosa was no longer in the building.

With the senator’s whereabouts unknown, Vida warned that any efforts to help dela Rosa leave the country would be treated as a “mockery of justice”.

Border officials have been told that “if Senator Bato Dela Rosa would try to leave the country, that the appropriate arrest should be made,” the secretary added.

Drug war crimes

Dela Rosa faces similar charges to those against Duterte, who has been held in ICC custody in The Hague since March 2025.

From 2016 to 2019, the former president’s “war on drugs” killed between 12,000 and 30,000 people, the ICC estimates.

The fugitive senator is named as one of eight co-perpetrators in the case and is accused of serving as Duterte’s top enforcer.

In an interview that aired on Thursday, dela Rosa pledged to “exhaust all available remedies” to block his transfer to the ICC.