The chief enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte's deadly drug war has fled the Senate, where he had sought refuge to escape arrest over alleged crimes against humanity, the chamber's president said Thursday.
A day earlier gunshots rang out in the Senate in Manila during a confrontation that erupted after Senator Ronald Dela Rosa had sheltered in the building to avoid an International Criminal Court warrant.
Dela Rosa was the national police chief from 2016-2018 during the first two years of Duterte's anti-narcotics crackdown that killed thousands and now faces ICC allegations.
"The sergeant at arms has confirmed that Senator Bato is no longer in the building," Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano told a news conference, using Dela Rosa's nickname.
Cayetano said he gave Dela Rosa a ride to the Senate on Monday, where the former police chief narrowly evaded arrest by government agents who chased him up the stairs.
Dela Rosa vowed to fight efforts to arrest him and turn him over to the Netherlands-based ICC, as Cayetano forbade government agents from serving him an ICC arrest warrant.
Duterte was arrested in March last year over an ICC case stemming from drug war killings and flown to the Netherlands, where he is being held in The Hague awaiting trial.
Cayetano said Dela Rosa's wife sent him a message confirming that her husband had "made his escape".
He did not say where Dela Rosa had gone or when he left and angrily denied accusations that the Senate leadership had helped Dela Rosa leave.
"He made this decision on his own," Cayetano stressed.
The ICC confirmed it had issued an arrest warrant for Dela Rosa, accusing him of the crime against humanity of murder.
On Wednesday, Senate security personnel and a National Bureau of Investigation employee both fired into the air during a tense confrontation at the Senate complex on Wednesday night, forcing legislators to take cover inside their offices.
Cayetano said Dela Rosa's disappearance was discovered shortly after police announced Thursday the arrest of a person in connection the gunfire.
Police seized live ammunition from the man they arrested, who was being tested for gunshot residue.
Even as the Dela Rosa controversy was unresolved, Cayetano announced Thursday that the senate would open next week the trial of Duterte's impeached eldest daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte.
She was impeached or formally accused Monday of graft charges and an alleged assassination plot against former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.
Under the Philippine constitution, an impeachment triggers a trial in the Senate, where a guilty verdict would see her removed and banned from elected office for life.
Duterte, who has announced a 2028 presidential bid, expressed dismay at the senate incidents while criticising what she said were the priorities of her former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.
"What we are seeing now is an administration using all government resources to demolish political opposition or those individuals who do not follow or agree (with) or support (Marcos)," she said in a recorded video statement.
Duterte and Marcos have been engaged in a high-stakes political brawl that erupted within weeks of their 2022 presidential election victory, when the vice president was denied her desired defence portfolio and instead named education secretary.
cgm/pam/jm
