Meridian World Desk
Judges at the International Criminal Court have ruled that Rodrigo Duterte, the 81-year-old former president of the Philippines, is fit to stand trial on crimes against humanity charges tied to his years-long anti-drug campaign. The decision rejects a defence request for an indefinite halt to proceedings on medical grounds and keeps intact a trial date of 30 November.
The finding rests on an assessment by an independent panel of three medical experts, who examined Duterte and concluded that despite age-related physical and mental slowing, he retains the capacity to understand the charges, follow courtroom proceedings, enter a plea and discuss his defence with his lawyers. Judges relied on that assessment in denying the defence motion.
The ruling is the latest step in a case that has already tested the ICC’s reach over a former head of state. Duterte was arrested in the Philippines in March 2025 and surrendered to the court in The Hague, where he has remained in custody since. A confirmation of charges hearing followed in February 2026, and on 23 April 2026 the Pre-Trial Chamber unanimously confirmed all crimes against humanity charges against him, committing him to trial.
Prosecutors have told judges there are substantial grounds to believe Duterte played a key role in the murder of 76 people and the attempted murder of two others, carried out during his campaign against drug trafficking. The alleged killings span the years of his presidency, from 2016 to 2022, as well as his earlier tenure as mayor of Davao City, where prosecutors say a pattern of extrajudicial violence against suspected drug offenders took root before he rose to national office.
A crackdown measured in thousands of bodies
The scale of the killings attributed to Duterte’s drug war has never been settled with precision. Police figures put the toll at more than 6,000 dead; human rights groups say the real number could run as high as 30,000. That gulf between official counts and independent estimates has shadowed the case from the start, and it is part of why prosecutors built their charges around specific, documented killings rather than the crackdown’s full toll.
Among those left behind is Randy delos Santos, whose teenage nephew was shot dead by police in 2017 during the campaign. He has called for accountability not only for Duterte but for the police officials who carried out the killings on the ground — a demand that points to a wider reckoning the trial is unlikely, on its own, to resolve.
The Philippine National Police is alleged by prosecutors to have carried out the killings at Duterte’s direction, functioning as the operational arm of a campaign prosecutors argue was directed from the top of the state.
A test of the court’s authority
Duterte’s prosecution is the first time the ICC has brought a former Asian head of state before it on crimes against humanity charges, a fact that has drawn close attention to how far the court’s authority extends over leaders who commanded a state’s own security forces while in power. His defence has fought the case on multiple fronts, including challenges to his fitness to face trial at all, citing his age and reports of cognitive decline. Those challenges have now been rejected twice: first when the Pre-Trial Chamber found him fit for pre-trial proceedings, rejecting an earlier adjournment bid, and now in the ruling clearing him for trial itself.
With that question resolved, the case moves toward its most consequential phase yet. Barring further delay, Duterte will appear before ICC judges in The Hague on 30 November to begin a trial that will test, in open court, the evidence prosecutors have spent years assembling against him — and that victims’ families have waited years to see tested.