Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been arrested after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for “crimes against humanity” related to the bloody “war on drugs” he waged during his term in office.

Duterte, who will turn 80 this month, is accused by ICC prosecutors that through his campaign against drugs he caused the deaths of thousands of people, most of them men in poor, urban areas, who were executed either in the streets or in their homes.

The Philippine president’s office said Duterte was arrested Tuesday morning at the airport in Manila after returning from Hong Kong.

“Early this morning, the local Interpol department received the official copy of the arrest warrant from the ICC. At this time, Duterte is in the custody of the authorities,” the statement from the presidential palace said.

According to the Guardian, Duterte had recently commented on rumours of his imminent arrest, stating: “If this is my fate, I accept it. There’s nothing I can do.”

Duterte took over the Philippine presidency in 2016, having promised during his election campaign a relentless fight against drugs. Before he was even elected, he declared that so many people would be killed that the fish in Manila Bay would be fattened by the bodies. After taking office, he had publicly announced that he would kill suspected drug trafficking and had called on citizens to kill drug users.

According to figures cited by the ICC, the number of victims linked to its anti-drug campaign operations ranged between 12,000 and 30,000 people.

Police authorities typically justified the executions by claiming that the officers were acting in self-defence, despite eyewitness accounts to the contrary. Human rights organizations complain that police routinely planted fake evidence, such as guns, shell casings and drugs, at the sites of executions. Meanwhile, an independent coroner who investigated the deaths discovered serious irregularities in autopsies, including multiple death certificates that falsely attributed the killings to natural causes.

In 2024, Duterte had appeared before the Senate in the Philippines to testify about the killings committed as part of the “war on drugs”. During the hearing, he had stated that he would not apologize or make excuses by claiming: “I did what I had to do and, believe it or not, I did it for my country.” In the same statement, he admitted that he had ordered police officers to encourage criminals to resist arrest so that they could be killed “legally”, while denying that he had given direct orders to kill suspects.