The International Criminal Court (ICC) did not declare the Philippines’ former president Rodrigo Duterte to be innocent in March, contrary to online posts that misrepresented his old campaign clip. The 80-year-old remains in the custody of the tribunal in The Hague as he awaits his next court hearing for a crimes against humanity charge scheduled in September.
“Rodrigo Duterte was acquitted by the international court,” reads the simplified Chinese caption to a TikTok video shared March 16, 2025.
“Duterte went home!” further claims text overlaid to the clip.
Similar posts also spread on TikTok’s Chinese version Douyin.
Duterte was arrested and swiftly transferred to The Hague on March 11 to face a crimes against humanity charge stemming from his deadly war on drugs that rights groups estimate killed tens of thousands (archived link).
His detention sparked a wave of misinformation not just in the Philippines but also among Chinese social media users. His tenure was marked by a swing away from the United States in favor of China.
Duterte failed to attend in person the ICC’s initial hearing on March 14 and followed the proceedings via videolink (archived link).
There have been no official reports that he had been released, with the UN-backed tribunal setting the next hearing on September 23 (archived link).
Nicholas Kaufman, Duterte’s lead lawyer, told AFP in an interview that he was visiting his client virtually every day in the ICC detention centre and Duterte was in “good spirits” and “adjusting to the reality of prison life” (archived link).
The video shared in the posts was filmed before his arrest.
A reverse image search on Google and a subsequent keyword search on TikTok found a video uploaded March 1 showing a similar scene (archived link).
Read the full story on AFP Fact Check.