Prosecutor v. Duterte — Case Chronicle

International Criminal Court · Trial Chamber III · No. ICC‑01/21‑01/25

A former president of the Philippines, charged at the International Criminal Court with three counts of crimes against humanity. The prosecution says he and the people around him had a plan to kill people accused of drug crimes and other crimes, first through a death squad in Davao City and then through police and others across the country. His defense has said there was no such plan and that nothing ties him to the deaths. He has been held in The Hague since March 2025, and judges have refused to end the case, to release him, or to find him unfit for trial. The trial is set to open on November 30, 2026, and nothing has been proved yet.

Arrested: Mar 11, 2025
Before: Korner, Paek, Guillou
Trial opens: Nov 30, 2026
Status: Undecided

Prosecution The side bringing the charges

The Prosecutor

The court’s own prosecution office

At this court a case is brought in the name of the Prosecutor, the same way a criminal case in the US is brought in the name of the People or the State. The Prosecutor’s office is part of the court but it works on its own, so it isn’t acting for any country here, and that includes the Philippines. The person running this case is the deputy prosecutor, Mame Mandiaye Niang. The chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, isn’t on it. Appeals judges took him off in October 2025, because before he got the job he had worked for victims of these same killings and they said that could look like bias. The ruling was about how it could look, and it didn’t find that he was biased.

ICC, case information sheet · Record 286-Red, p. 18

Defendant The person charged

Rodrigo Roa Duterte

President of the Philippines, 2016–2022

He was born in 1945 and grew up in Davao, on the southern island of Mindanao. He trained as a lawyer and spent nine years as a prosecutor for the city before he went into politics there in 1986. He was mayor of Davao City for more than 22 years in all, and the tough-on-crime name he made there is what he ran on for president in 2016. He won, served the one six-year term a president gets, and left office in 2022. In May 2025, two months after his arrest, Davao elected him mayor again. One of his sons has been doing the job in his place, and his daughter Sara is the country’s vice president. The court calls him the accused.

Record 417-Red ¶¶ 78–79 · Record 282-Red ¶ 51 · Background: Britannica · Reporting: GMA News, Jul 1, 2025

Notes

How this was made, and what it leaves out

Source

Built from the court’s own public record of the case, which held 577 documents on November 8, 2026. These pages rest on the decisions, the charges, each side’s main filings and the transcripts of ten hearings, and not on a reading of every annex. Every characterization here comes from a filing, a transcript or a signed decision, and each side is quoted from its own filings and its own lawyers.

Every record number in a citation opens that document in the ICC Legal Tools Database, an open online library that carries the court’s public records. Citations to a page open the document at that page.

What is blacked out

A great deal. Most filings exist twice, a confidential version and a public one with parts redacted, and these pages can only read the public one. In the charges that takes out the names of all but five of the 78 people and the dates and places of most of the 49 incidents. Nearly every witness is only a number, like P-0002. The medical findings about him are blacked out, and so is the country he asked to be released to.

His lawyer at the time told the judges the redactions were “so sweeping that virtually nothing intelligible remains of the 49 incidents” for the public to read. The presiding judge answered that the defense sees all of it, and that “it just is not available to the public.”

Record 178-Red2 ¶¶ 27–77 · Tr. T-007, 44:17–20, 52:5–7

Names and numbers

Victims are named here only where the public charges name them, which is five people. The charges also name eight officials the prosecution says shared the plan with him. None of the eight is on trial in this case, and the judges wrote that what they said about those eight is not a finding about anyone’s guilt but his.

The charges covered 78 people, and in October 2026 the trial judges let in seven more incidents. The prosecution calls that a fraction. The Philippine government’s own count of people killed in police anti-drug operations from July 2016 to February 2019 was 5,281, and the estimates the court cited when it opened the investigation ran from 12,000 to 30,000. A wider number is used on these pages only with whose number it is.

Record 417-Red ¶ 85 · Record 519-Red ¶ 47 · Record 12 ¶¶ 39, 67

What this is not

Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict. Judges have said twice that there is enough here to go on, once to order his arrest and once at the confirmation of charges, and both times the test was lower than proof. A conviction takes proof beyond reasonable doubt. No witness has testified yet, and his lawyer told the court in February 2026 that he maintains his innocence.

The two sides have formally agreed on four facts so far: when and where he was born, his nationality, what the initials PRRD stand for, and what a barangay is. Everything else is in dispute. Where the record doesn’t reach, these pages say so and stop.

Tr. T-004, 38:17 · Record 259-Red ¶ 3

Tell me what I got wrong

If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.

No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.

Record reviewed through November 8, 2026. Nothing filed after that date is reflected here.

Terms

Plain English

Words this page uses because the court uses them. Nothing here is special to this case.

The court

International Criminal Court: A permanent court in The Hague, in the Netherlands, that tries individual people for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and aggression. It is not part of the United Nations, and it only has power where its treaty gives it power.
The Prosecutor: The head of the court’s Office of the Prosecutor, which investigates and brings cases on its own authority. Every case here is titled in the Prosecutor’s name.
Chamber: A panel of judges. A Pre-Trial Chamber of three handles a case up to the decision to send it to trial, a Trial Chamber of three hears the trial, and the Appeals Chamber of five hears appeals. There is no jury.
Accused: What this court calls the person on trial once the charges are confirmed. Before that the word is suspect.

The paperwork

Record number: How a filing is cited. ICC-01/21-01/25-417 is the 417th document in this case, shortened here to Record 417. “Red” on the end means it is the public version with parts blacked out.
Redacted: Blacked out. Most filings here exist in a confidential version and a public one with names, dates or places removed, usually to protect witnesses and victims.
Transcript: The word-for-word record of a hearing. Cited by page and line, so 9:14 means page 9, line 14.

The charges

Crimes against humanity: Certain acts, murder among them, when they are part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population, carried out under a government’s or an organization’s policy.
Count: One charge. This case has three.
Incident: One of the specific killings or attempted killings the prosecution lists as an example under a count.

How a case moves

Confirmation of charges: The stage where three judges decide whether the prosecution has enough to justify a trial. It is a filter, and it is not a verdict.
Standards of proof: How sure the judges have to be. Reasonable grounds to believe is enough for an arrest warrant. Substantial grounds to believe is enough to send a case to trial. A conviction takes proof beyond reasonable doubt.