By Joyce Ann L. Rocamora
MANILA – The International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed on Monday night that the warrant of arrest against Sen. Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa, which circulated in the media, “is indeed a formal ICC document.”
The ICC unsealed and formally classified the document as “public” on May 11.
“This arrest warrant against Mr. Ronald Marapon Dela Rosa was issued confidentially, under seal, by Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC on 6 November 2025,” ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet said in a text message to reporters.
Dela Rosa, who had not been seen in public since November, attended a Senate session on Monday and cast a vote to oust Senate President Vicente Sotto III during the chamber’s leadership shakeup.
On the same day, former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, together with personnel of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), presented to the media what he said was a copy of the ICC warrant of arrest.
The document was issued on Nov. 6 by the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber against dela Rosa for his alleged criminal responsibility as an “indirect co-perpetrator” in the killings that took place during the campaign against illegal drugs in the Philippines.
The ICC prosecution earlier said detained former president Rodrigo Duterte and his eight alleged co-perpetrators, including dela Rosa, “shared a common plan or agreement to neutralize alleged criminals in the Philippines,” and those linked with drug use and sale through violent crimes, including murder.
The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I, in the unsealed warrant, said dela Rosa’s alleged involvement in the so-called “common plan” amounts to a “crime against humanity of murder” committed at least between July 3, 2016 and the end of April 2018 in the Philippines, “during which no less than 32 persons were killed.
Dela Rosa was Duterte’s first Philippine National Police chief when he was president. (With reports from Wilnard Bacelonia/PNA)
