Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa broke his days-long silence to deny that he had gone into hiding to escape possible arrest on orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC), even as several solons warned that the day of reckoning for the former national police chief and other implementers of the Duterte administration’s drug war is at hand.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Dela Rosa said he is willing to surrender to the ICC if the tribunal issues an arrest warrant against him.
“If there is a warrant, I’m ready. I’m willing to take care of former President Duterte. I think that’s my purpose,” he declared.
“I will surrender if there’s an arrest warrant. How can they let me in if there isn’t one? They won’t allow me inside,” the re-electionist Senator continued.
Dela Rosa clarified that he was unreachable in recent days because was campaigning in the mountains of Surigao and Agusan.
“I’m not hiding. I’m right here,” he said when asked about his location, which could not be definitively confirmed.
The senator said he received information about the ICC warrant late last week, just as he was about to join Duterte in Hong Kong.
“The information I got was that both President Duterte and I now have warrants, so I decided not to go. I needed to handle this. Didn’t I tell you before that if a warrant was issued, I would seek judicial relief from the Supreme Court?” he said.
Still, despite the scuttlebutt, Malacañang said it has not received confirmation about an Interpol red notice for the “co-perpetrators” of former President Rodrigo Duterte in connection with extrajudicial killings of drug suspects allegedly made at his behest.
“We have not received [word on a red notice]… so far, we have not received any official communication [from the Interpol],” Palace Press Officer Undersecretary Claire Castro told reporters in Filipino.
“Our response will be the same if Interpol asks for help. The situation will be different if the subject of the warrant of arrest voluntarily surrenders. Then we will have no need for the drama that happened Tuesday,” she added.ICC assistant to counsel Atty. Kristina Conti confirmed that Dela Rosa and former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Oscar Albayalde were named in the tribunal’s documents.
Conti revealed that the ICC considers Dela Rosa and Albayalde among the key figures in Duterte’s controversial war on drugs.
Dela Rosa, who served as PNP chief from 2016 to 2018, was a central figure in enforcing Duterte’s anti-drug policies, which human rights groups claim resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings.
The senator has consistently rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction over the Philippines, arguing that the country withdrew from the court in 2019.
“If all legal remedies are exhausted and justice is to no avail, then I don’t want my family to suffer from cops looking for a heartbeat,” he said.
“I am ready to join the old man hoping that they would allow me to take care of him,” Dela Rosa concluded.