{"id":76463,"date":"2026-02-23T10:32:59","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T01:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/23\/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-case-icc-pre-trial-hearing-international-criminal-court-ntwnfb"},"modified":"2026-02-24T01:29:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T16:29:35","slug":"duterte-refuses-to-attend-icc-pre-trial-hearing-as-former-philippine-leaders-drug-war-case-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=76463","title":{"rendered":"Duterte at \u2018very heart\u2019 of murderous drug crackdowns in Philippines, ICC told"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-president, accused of crimes against humanity, selected targets and promised immunity for death squad members, prosecutor says<\/p>\n<p>Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, was \u201cat the very heart\u201d of brutal anti-drugs campaigns that led to the killing of thousands of people, prosecutors at the international criminal court (ICC) have argued, as they called for charges against him to proceed to trial.<\/p>\n<p>Duterte, 80, who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/mar\/11\/rodrigo-duterte-arrest-manila-former-philippines-president-war-on-drugs-ntwnfb\">arrested in Manila last year<\/a> and flown to The Hague, is facing three counts of crimes against humanity over campaigns against drug users and dealers during his presidency, and his earlier tenure as mayor of the city of Davao.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/feb\/23\/rodrigo-duterte-drug-war-case-icc-pre-trial-hearing-international-criminal-court-ntwnfb\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ex-president, accused of crimes against humanity, selected targets and promised immunity for death squad members, prosecutor saysRodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, was \u201cat the very heart\u201d of brutal anti-drugs campaigns that led t&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,927,86,55,204,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-international-criminal-court","category-law","category-philippines","category-rodrigo-duterte","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76474,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76463\/revisions\/76474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}