VP renews call for ICC to release her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, from detention

Vice President Sara Duterte has renewed her call for the immediate release of her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, from the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC), arguing that his ongoing detention is politically motivated rather than a matter of justice.

Addressing supporters in The Hague on Wednesday, the Vice President insisted that the circumstances of the elder Duterte’s case do not justify his continued detention under the Rome Statute.

"He should be released, and he should be released immediately.... This is not about justice. This is about politics in the Philippines," she said.

The Vice President pointed to her father’s declining health and advanced age, noting that the 81-year-old former chief executive is physically frail and requires assistance for basic daily needs.

"They are holding an 81-year-old who cannot make his own bed, who cannot even clean his own room, who has bedsores and who has so many aches and pains because of old age," she told the crowd.

She also pushed back against the ICC’s assessment that the former president presents a flight risk, citing his physical limitations.

"You saw [former] President Duterte being pushed, pulled outside of the room, pushed into a plane. Is that a person who is a flight risk? He cannot even walk three steps without falling to the ground," she said.

Duterte directed heavy criticism at President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, accusing them of collaborating with the international tribunal to orchestrate her father's detention.

"Marcos supporting ICC. ICC supporting Marcos," she claimed, before calling both men "traitors to a Filipino and to the country."

She went on to question the tribunal's jurisdiction over the Philippines, arguing that the court’s actions have undermined justice for Filipinos.

"If this is about justice, then why does it allow injustice to happen to people who are respondents of complaints inside ICC?" she asked. "There is no justice for the Philippines. There is no justice for Filipinos, and there is no justice for former President Rodrigo Duterte."

The former president faces charges of crimes against humanity before the ICC in connection with thousands of alleged extrajudicial killings during his administration's anti-drug campaign, as well as during his tenure as mayor of Davao City. He has been held at the ICC detention center in The Hague since March of last year.