Plane carrying ex-President Rodrigo Duterte en route to The Hague

A plane carrying former President Rodrigo Duterte prepares to leave at the Villamor Air Base in Manila, Philippines, Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo)

MANILA, Philippines — The chartered plane carrying former President Rodrigo Duterte is now on its way to The Hague, the Netherlands, according to a flight tracker website.

As of 7:53 p.m. (Philippine time), flightradar24.com said that the Gulfstream 6550 jet, with tail no. RPC2519 is expected to arrive at the Rotterdam The Hague Airport in the Netherlands around 12:12 a.m. on Thursday (Philippine time)

The plane, which left Villamor Air Base in Pasay City around 11 p.m. on Tuesday, arrived past 8 a.m. on Wednesday in Dubai for a short layover.

READ: LIVE UPDATES: Rodrigo Duterte at The Hague

It left Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai around 3:58 p.m.

INQUIRER.net reached out to the camp of Duterte to confirm the estimated time of departure from Dubai and estimated time of arrival in the Netherlands.

Lawyer Salvador Panelo, Duterte’s former chief presidential legal counsel, however, said that he has no information about the flight details.

But according to the Associated Press, flight tracking data showed that after leaving Manila, the jet carrying Duterte waited for hours in Dubai before taking off again, apparently headed for Rotterdam The Hague Airport.

On arriving in the Netherlands, Duterte will be taken to the court’s detention unit inside a Dutch prison complex near the North Sea coast.

Duterte was arrested at the request of the International Criminal Police Organization upon his arrival to the country from Hong Kong on Tuesday morning.

He is the subject of the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity during his administration’s bloody war on illegal drugs.

Major step toward ending impunity

The 79-year-old Duterte’s arrest by the global court was hailed by human rights groups and families of victims as a major breakthrough and step toward ending impunity.

Rights groups and families of victims welcomed the arrest.

READ: Spotlight should be on drug war victims, not Duterte – Acidre

“This is a monumental and long-overdue step for justice for thousands of victims and their families,” said Jerrie Abella of Amnesty International.

“It is, therefore, a hopeful sign for them, as well, in the Philippines and beyond, as it shows that suspected perpetrators of the worst crimes, including government leaders, will face justice wherever they are in the world,” Abella added.

Emily Soriano, the mother of a victim of the crackdowns, said she wanted more officials to face justice.

“Duterte is lucky he has due process, but our children who were killed did not have due process,” she said.

Duterte’s supporters, however, criticized his arrest as illegal and sought to have him returned home. Small groups of Duterte supporters and people who backed his arrest demonstrated on Wednesday outside the court before his arrival.

ICC investigation

The ICC opened an inquiry in 2021 into mass killings linked to the so-called war on drugs overseen by Duterte when he served as mayor of Davao City and later as president.

Estimates of the death toll during Duterte’s presidential term vary, from the more than 6,000 that the national police have reported and up to 30,000 claimed by human rights groups.

ICC judges who looked at prosecution evidence supporting their request for his arrest found “reasonable grounds to believe that Duterte is individually responsible for the crime against humanity of murder” as an “indirect co-perpetrator for having allegedly overseen the killings when he was mayor of Davao and later president of the Philippines,” according to his warrant.

READ: ICC EXPLAINER: Fine points in the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte

What happens next?

Within days of being taken into custody at the court’s detention center, Duterte will be taken to court for a hearing. Judges will confirm his identity, check that he understands the charges against him and set a date for a hearing known as a confirmation of charges at which a panel of pretrial judges will assess if prosecutors have sufficient evidence to merit sending him to a full trial.

Duterte could challenge the court’s jurisdiction and the admissibility of the case. While the Philippines is no longer a member of the ICC, the alleged crimes happened before Manila withdrew from the court.

That process will likely take months, and if the case progresses to a trial it could take years.

Duterte will be able to apply for provisional release from the court’s detention center while he waits, though it’s up to judges to decide whether to grant such a request.

Duterte’s legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, told reporters in Manila that the Philippine Supreme Court “can compel the government to bring back the person arrested and detained without probable cause and compel the government bring him before the court and to explain to them why they (government) did what they did.”

READ: SC refuses request for immediate TRO vs gov’t cooperation with ICC

Marcos said Tuesday that Duterte’s arrest was “proper and correct” and not an act of political persecution.

Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, criticized the Marcos administration for surrendering her father to a foreign court, which currently has no jurisdiction in the Philippines.

PH is no longer an ICC member state

Duterte withdrew the Philippines in 2019 from the ICC, in a move human rights activists say was aimed at escaping accountability.

The Duterte administration moved to suspend the global court’s investigation in late 2021 by arguing that Philippine authorities were already looking into the same allegations, arguing that the ICC — a court of last resort — therefore didn’t have jurisdiction.

READ: PH gov’t urged to rejoin ICC – Human Rights Watch

Appeals judges at the ICC rejected those arguments and ruled in 2023 that the investigation could resume.

The ICC judges who issued the warrant also said that the alleged crimes fall within the court’s jurisdiction. They said Duterte’s arrest was necessary because of what they called the “risk of interference with the investigations and the security of witnesses and victims.”