Chaos descended upon the Philippines’ Senate on Wednesday night after gunshots rang out within its premises, where a Senator wanted by the International Criminal Court over his involvement in a national drug war had been hiding before escaping Thursday.
Police have since identified a suspect in the shooting: a driver working with the country’s National Bureau of Investigation, the agency that has attempted to carry out an ICC warrant on Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa since Monday.
Dela Rosa, who has neither appeared publicly nor reported to work in months, was known as the tough-talking national police chief who enforced former President Rodrigo Duterte’s sweeping crackdown on illegal drugs, which led to thousands of deaths in the Southeast Asian nation. Duterte was arrested in March 2025 and is currently detained in The Hague, Netherlands, as he is set to face an ICC trial over alleged crimes against humanity related to the crackdown.
On Wednesday afternoon, before the Senate shooting incident, dela Rosa broadcast live on social media and claimed that his arrest was imminent, saying he received information that after that day’s session, operatives from the NBI and the police’s investigative arm, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, would head there to arrest him.
He appealed to his supporters: “I call on you. I hope you can help me. Let’s not allow another Filipino to be brought to The Hague, second to President Duterte.” Both Duterte and Dela Rosa maintain their innocence, and dela Rosa has asked the country’s Supreme Court to block his arrest.
Current President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. denied ordering the arrest of dela Rosa, a staunch ally of the Dutertes, a prominent political dynasty with whom Marcos Jr. has since had a falling-out. The President also urged the public to remain calm amid the incident.
The Senate, which is currently led by a known Duterte ally, has granted protective custody to dela Rosa, who left the Senate premises early Thursday morning after remaining there for days to evade arrest.
After Duterte won the 2016 presidential elections, he handpicked dela Rosa, who had previously been police director in the Dutertes’ political home turf in the country’s south, Davao City, to be national police chief.
Popularly nicknamed Bato, which means rock, Dela Rosa served in the role from July 2016 to April 2018. On his first day, the police launched “Project Double Barrel,” a campaign aimed at the “neutralization of illegal drug personalities nationwide” by targeting both high-value targets and syndicates and by conducting village-level operations.
Vigilante executions increased, and many from the urban poor were killed. Just months in, the drug war had caused more than 2,000 deaths—either in police operations or extrajudicial killings—of alleged, small-time drug users and dealers. Children also died. At the end of President Duterte’s term in 2022, more than 6,000 were killed in anti-illegal drugs operations according to government figures. Human rights groups, however, estimate the death toll to be in the tens of thousands.
Police operatives claim some suspects were killed after fighting back, and dela Rosa has vigorously defended the campaign. In 2016, he told TIME that police worked within the bounds of Philippine laws, which he described then as “constraints” that they “can deal with.” He’s also called critics of the drug war “ingrates,” claiming they “also benefited from the peace and order that the war on drugs has brought.”
Riding on the drug war’s popularity, dela Rosa, after a brief stint in the country’s Bureau of Corrections, ran for Senate in 2019 and won, ranking as the fifth most-voted candidate with over 19 million votes. He has continued to defend Duterte’s drug war as Senator and, at one point, was widely panned after a toddler died in police-led anti-drug operations, which he dismissed as “sh-t happens” and “collateral damage.” He was reelected to a six-year term in May 2025.
Why did dela Rosa go into hiding?
When former President Duterte was arrested on March 11, 2025, on an ICC warrant and brought to The Hague, speculation rose that others involved in the drug war may also be nabbed. Dela Rosa, days after Duterte’s arrest, said that he would consider going into hiding.
On Nov. 6, 2025, the ICC issued in secret an arrest warrant against dela Rosa for his involvement in Duterte’s drug war. The Philippines’ Ombudsman then went public with the warrant’s issuance. Since Nov. 11, dela Rosa has been absent from Senate sessions.
In the updated ICC document containing charges released in February, dela Rosa and another Duterte-allied Senator, Christopher “Bong” Go, were named “indirect co-perpetrators” in the alleged crimes the former President is accused of having committed during his time as Davao City Mayor and as President.
Why did dela Rosa resurface after hiding?
As the ICC case unfolded, the Duterte family was also taking a domestic political battering. The House of Representatives had been working on the second impeachment of incumbent Vice President Sara Duterte, who leads in public opinion polling to be the next Philippine President.
As the House impeached the Vice President on Monday, dela Rosa simultaneously and suddenly appeared in the Senate, which is required to convene as an impeachment court. Dela Rosa and other Senators voted to change the chamber’s leadership to an even more Duterte-friendly one.
However, NBI agents had been waiting to serve the arrest warrant against dela Rosa. This resulted in an extraordinary chase within the Senate premises—a cat-and-mouse game captured on CCTV, where dela Rosa, 64, could be seen running and weaving through corridors and stairwells. Dela Rosa eventually found refuge in the Senate’s main chamber, which has traditionally disallowed arrests as a sign of respect for the institution.
Dela Rosa holed up in the Senate premises, but he left Thursday, before the NBI said it would hold off on arresting him pending a ruling from the Supreme Court.
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