“The impunity is grave, as shown by the ‘repeated, unchanging and continuing’ extra-judicial or summary executions, with unrelenting impunity, ever since the time that President Duterte was still Mayor of Davao City claiming 1,400 deaths, more or less, under his Davao Death Squad and later on in the national level in the war on drugs after 30 June 2016 waged by the very same person, no less than President Duterte, who formed, created, managed, headed and masterminded the Davao Death Squad in Davao City when he was still a Mayor. In a 77-page complaint submitted to the ICC, lawyer Jude Josue Sabio cited “continuing mass murder” in the Philippines, as shown by the thousands of deaths in Mr. Duterte’s bloody campaign against crime and illegal drugs in Davao City, which he rolled out on a national scale after becoming President of the Philippines. Sabio told ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda that her speedy action on the complaint “would not only serve the noble ends of international criminal justice, but would also be the beginning of the end of this dark, obscene, murderous and evil era in the Philippines.”

From the time he was mayor of Davao City up to the time he became President, Mr. Duterte has been “repeatedly, unchangingly and continuously” committing mass murders “constituting crimes against humanity,” Sabio said in the complaint. “Crimes against humanity are crimes of universal jurisdiction, but where a State like the Philippines fails to assume such universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity continuously being committed in its very own territory, then the International Criminal Court will have to intervene into a situation that is grave by any human standard,” dagdag ni Sabio. Accused of crimes against humanity with Mr. Duterte were Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II; the PNP chief, Director General Ronald dela Rosa; police Superintendents Edilberto Leonardo and Royina Garma; Speaker of the House of Representatives Pantaleon Alvarez; former Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno; SPO4 Sanson “Sonny” Buenaventura; National Bureau of Investigation Director Dante Gierran; Solicitor General Jose Calida, and Senators Richard Gordon and Alan Peter Cayetano.
The accused include PNP chief Ronald dela Rosa, Justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, Edilberto Leonardo, Royina Garma, House speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, former Interior secretary Ismael Sueno, Sonny Buenaventura, Solicitor General Jose Calida, Dante Gierran, Senator Richard J. Gordon, and Senator Alan Peter Cayetano.