Government officials on Thursday offered conflicting statements during a Senate hearing on former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest, revealing major inconsistencies in the justification for his hasty turnover to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, the Netherlands, last 11 March.

Philippine Center for Transnational Crime (PCTC) Executive Director Anthony Alcantara admitted that the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) issued only a diffusion notice against Duterte — a lower-level alert used for information sharing — rather than a Red Notice, which is typically required to undertake a provisional arrest.

“It was a diffusion — a red diffusion. More technically, it was a Wanted Person Diffusion,” Alcantara said when pressed by Senator Imee Marcos, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to clarify the nature of the Interpol request.

He confirmed that the Interpol’s National Central Bureau (NCB)-Manila received the diffusion notice at 3 a.m. on 10 March and forwarded it to law enforcement agencies, including the National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police, Bureau of Immigration and Department of Justice.

On its website, Interpol defines a diffusion as a request for cooperation between member states, whereas a Red Notice is a formal request for law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest an individual. Interpol explicitly states that a Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant, and member countries should apply their own laws in deciding whether or not to act on it.

Citing Interpol’s communication, Senator Marcos highlighted a key inconsistency which stated that the request for Duterte’s arrest was made “with prior consultation with the Philippine government.”

“The request for [arrest] was made with prior consultation with the Philippine government. So, it is not true that you only learned about it on 11 March at 3 a.m. This means the government had already discussed it and agreed [to it],” Marcos said. “So, this was just a formal transmittal — it wasn’t sudden. That’s why as early as 10 March, 7,000 police officers had already been mobilized.”

Frustrating response

Alcantara, however, deflected responsibility, claiming the ICC initiated the request, not the Philippine government. His response visibly frustrated Marcos.

“So, Interpol is lying?” she asked. “Because Interpol said the diffusion was released after a consultation with the government. They said that they had yet to make a compliance review. They had yet to investigate and prove this diffusion.”

Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla countered that Interpol likely used standard wording in its notices.

“They surely have a lot of standard wording in their form letter,” he said. “For example, when they mentioned ‘after coordinating with the Government of the Republic of the Philippines,’ my question is — who exactly did they speak with? Because it certainly wasn’t us.”

It may be recalled that Remulla in 2024 said under oath before another Senate hearing that any ICC arrest order or Interpol Notice should be brought before local courts to determine whether or not they could be legally served to the respondents.

Nothing of the sort happened in Duterte’s arrest. In fact, he was bundled into a plane by Police Maj. Gen. Nicolas Torre III using force, after handcuffing Duterte’s lawyer and former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea, even if a petition to stop the arrest was filed by the former president’s lawyers before the Supreme Court.

A longtime official in the Duterte administration, National Security Council Director General Eduardo Año, told the Senate he was unaware of any coordination with the ICC and only learned of the diffusion notice on 11 March.

However, Interpol’s document explicitly stated: “This diffusion is transmitted after prior consultations with the Government of the Philippines, who have agreed to comply with this request for arrest.”

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has denied any direct involvement with the ICC in Duterte’s arrest, claiming his administration simply acted upon Interpol’s request.

“Interpol asked for help and we obliged because we have commitments to Interpol which we have to fulfill. If we don’t do that, they will no longer help us with other cases involving Filipino fugitives abroad,” Marcos said.

‘The question is, where is the warrant of arrest issued by a Philippine court? There is none. Without a valid warrant from a Philippine court, this was at best a warrantless arrest.’

Duterte faces allegations of murder as a crime against humanity, allegedly committed between 1 November 2011 and 16 March 2019. Official government data estimates at least 7,000 deaths in Duterte’s war on drugs, though human rights groups insist the actual figure could be as high as 30,000.

Senator Marcos also quizzed Interior and Local Government Secretary Jonvic Remulla on his television interview, which tended to contradict the government’s stance that it did not “plot” prior to 11 March to have Duterte arrested.

The senator played a video of an interview in which DILG Secretary Remulla said that he, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, President Marcos and Año set the arrest of Duterte in motion.

Sara: Arrest illegal

Appearing at the hearing via teleconferencing, Vice President Sara Duterte denounced her father’s arrest as illegal, accusing the Marcos administration of violating due process.

“On 11 March 2025, former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte was forcibly taken by the Philippine National Police upon his arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. He was brought to Villamor Air Base, a military air base, detained for nearly 12 hours, and then flown out of the country on a private jet to The Hague, all allegedly because of a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court,” she said in a statement to the Senate.

No warrant

“This was patently an illegal arrest. This constitutes an extraordinary rendition. A Filipino citizen, a former president, was taken into custody without a valid warrant issued by a Philippine court, without due process, and without any legal basis under our laws,” she said, citing Section 2, Article 3 of the Constitution, which guarantees due process in arrests.

“The question is, where is the warrant of arrest issued by a Philippine court? There is none. Without a valid warrant from a Philippine court, this was at best a warrantless arrest,” Duterte said. “Under the rules of court, warrantless arrests are only permitted in three instances: in flagrante delicto, hot pursuit, and escape from custody. None of these apply to my father.”

She also accused the administration of using state resources and international mechanisms to target political opponents. “This is all about politics. The administration is using government resources and the ICC to demolish the opposition.”

Duterte questioned the silence of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which did not intervene despite her father being taken from a military base.

“Why did the AFP stand idly by while a former commander-in-chief was taken from a military base under questionable circumstances?” she asked. “How could they allow a foreign tribunal to override our constitutional guarantees? We have now lost a former president. I pray that we do not lose the country next.”

The Vice President pointed out that President Marcos had previously committed to non-cooperation with the ICC. She read a 15 December 2023 letter from the President stating: “This government will not assist the ICC in any way, shape, or form.”

“If the government itself has declared non-cooperation with the ICC, why did the PNP violate this very policy and enforce a foreign warrant?” Duterte asked. “Even granting for the sake of argument that we have some duty to cooperate with either the ICC or Interpol, does that duty override the fundamental rights of every Filipino enshrined in our Constitution?”

The former president has faced a pre-trial hearing at the ICC, with his next hearing set for September. His chief legal counsel, British-Israeli lawyer Nicholas Kaufman, expressed optimism Duterte would be exonerated at the soonest possible time.