The International Criminal Court (ICC) publicly released a Nov. 6, 2025 arrest warrant against Senator Ronald Dela Rosa on May 11.
Dela Rosa, who served as chief of the Philippine National Police during the previous administration, oversaw the bloody “war on drugs” of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
In the 16-page document, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I found “reasonable grounds” supporting Dela Rosa’s criminal responsibility as an “alleged co-perpetrator” of murder and attempted murder between Nov. 1, 2011 and March 16, 2019.
Moreover, a “common plan” to neutralize or murder individuals suspected of being drug users and pushers was also discovered by the Chamber, which highlighted 35 incidents as a “sample of alleged conduct.”
“Even though the Chamber only assessed 14 of the incidents, this representative number already shows that there was a course of conduct involving the commission of multiple acts against the civilian population on the territory of the Philippines,” the Chamber wrote.
The Prosecution found that the killings shared “common features” in terms of the locations, methods of killing, the profiles of perpetrators, and the profiles of the victims.
Despite the Philippines’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute in March 2019, the ICC maintained its jurisdiction over the case, asserting that the crimes occurred while the country was still a state party.
The ICC Registry was directed to coordinate with relevant states to execute the senator’s arrest and surrender to the court in The Hague.
Dela Rosa has yet to be apprehended by arresting forces who attempted to subdue him at the Senate on May 11.
The Senate has given Dela Rosa “protective custody,” after such a motion was approved by newly elected Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano.
If apprehended, Dela Rosa will join former president Duterte, who is detained at ICC Detention Center in The Hague, Netherlands.
The bloody drug war operation by the Duterte administration took 6,000 lives, as per government records, but estimates from human rights organizations place the toll from 12,000 to 30,000 killed.
