The tough former president was arrested after arriving from Hong Kong and has, according to the sitting president Ferdinand Marcos' office, been arrested on the order of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
The ICC, which confirms the arrest, has investigated the former president for crimes against humanity in connection with what is called Duterte's "war on drugs", when thousands of people were killed in the police's bloody street raids targeting both suspected users and drug dealers.
The ICC began investigating the murders as early as 2011 when Duterte was mayor of the city of Davao. In 2019, during his time as president, Duterte saw to it that the Philippines withdrew from the Rome Statute, the basic document that binds countries to follow the ICC's orders.
But the investigation at the court has continued in several rounds and was taken up again in July 2023.
President Ferdinand Marcos, who succeeded Duterte in 2022, has not rejoined the Rome Statute, but said that they may come to arrest the former president if Interpol issues a request for an arrest.
Already on Tuesday, the former president was put on a flight to The Hague. In a film clip his daughter Veronica Duterte has published on social media, the ex-president says to the authorities escorting him to a waiting plane:
Show me the jurisdiction that justifies my being here. You will be held accountable for the infringement of my freedom.
Duterte is still popular among his supporters in the Philippines. He is running for his old job as mayor of Davao in May.
