asymmetrical haircuts

Despite the political alignment that allowed the recent arrest and transfer of former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte to the International Criminal Court, arrest warrants have not been producing results in recent times.

The latest example was the extraordinary ‘debacle’ – as our guest Luigi Prosperi of Utrecht University put it – around Italy’s arrest and then transfer of Libyan warlord and smuggler Al Masri back to Libya. As of now, we have seen no response from Italy to the charge that it has failed to do its duty under the (ironically-named) founding document of the ICC, the Rome Statute.

Together with Luigi and our resident Italian speaker Margherita Capacci who produces our Patreon pod, we explored what exactly seemed to happen on the Italian side of things. And we wonder which countries, signed up to the ICC, would really arrest current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu or current Russian president Vladimir Putin, both facing charges at the ICC if they ever come to The Hague.

We promised in the pod to provide you a tonne of links. Luigi sent us the list below (of course he did, he’s a professor). We also suggest you can listen back to the earlier pods we did including the one with Nicole Samson head of the ICC’s investigative team into Libya and another with Sally Hayden who has written on the Libya migrant crisis.

Luigi’s recommended blog posts:

1. C. Meloni on JustSecurity: https://www.justsecurity.org/107175/italy-libya-icc-cooperation-elmasry-arrest/
2. L. Poltronieri Rossetti on EJIL: Talk! https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-failure-to-arrest-and-surrender-osama-elmasry-njeem-that-awful-mess-in-rome/
3. M. Crippa and M. Colorio on Opinio Juris https://opiniojuris.org/2025/01/31/as-rome-mutinies-justice-for-libya-fades/
4. G. Pecorella on International Law Blog https://internationallaw.blog/2025/02/22/a-lost-in-translation-in-the-obligations-to-cooperate-with-the-international-criminal-court-the-case-of-al-masri/
5. V. Bolici and A. Di Martino (in Italian) https://www.questionegiustizia.it/articolo/la-pagliuzza-e-la-trave-il-caso-almasri

And of course we have the ‘leisure’ recommendations of our guests. What Strange Paradiseby Omar el-Akkad and the movie Sing Sing and Sally’s book My Fourth Time, We Drowned.

Former President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte is now in the International Criminal Court Detention Unit following his arrest in Manila on charges linked to his “war on drugs” in which thousands of purported dealers and users were killed.

He’s been charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the anti-drugs crackdown while he was president from 2016 – 2022. He could become the first Asian former head of state to go on trial at the ICC.

Duterte was arrested at Manila airport on Tuesday and, within hours, was sent off on a chartered jet via Dubai to The Hague, despite his protests and some attempts to get the Supreme Court to intervene.

Why has he been arrested? Our colleague Lian Buan from Rappler explained the background: Local politics are part of the story – the current president and vice-president have fallen out. The VP is Duterte’s daughter. The president, Bongbong Marcos, had initially refused to cooperate with the ICC investigation, but as his relationship with the Duterte family has deteriorated, he changed his point of view. The ICC handover is the latest twist in the political saga. Sara Duterte, the vice-president has arrived to support her father in the Netherlands. According to the schedule she provided the media she is looking for a lawyer for him.

The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor welcomed the arrest and said it “thank[s] all the victims, survivors, witnesses and activists from the Philippines who have stepped forward to cooperate in the Office’s investigation. Their strength, courage, and perseverance make these significant developments possible”.