Kinda wild that this Senator has been MIA for months before he reappeared Monday, and then when local police tried to serve him with his arrest warrant, there is CCTV footage of him sprinting away from the police and having other Senators prevent his arrest.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos insisted the incident was not carried out by government personnel, but rather an apparent shootout between an unidentified armed group and Senate security personnel. Marcos said no government forces attempted to enter the Senate to arrest Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, a longtime ally of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who evaded arrest by local investigative unit officers earlier this week.

The accusations against Senator Ronald Dela Rosa are pretty damning and do follow what has become more and more accepted as the terrible war on drugs that Former President Duterte ran. Dela Rosa was the police chief of the city where Duterte first rose to prominence, and then followed him to the national level, becoming the national police chief.

The ICC arrest warrant alleges that Dela Rosa used his position as national police chief to implement “tokhang”-style killings nationally during Duterte’s presidency, allegations which he has repeatedly denied.

In an interview with CNN in 2016, Dela Rosa said that police officers kill suspected drug dealers “if it endangers our lives.”

More than 6,000 people were killed in anti-drug operations after Duterte took office, according to police data. Many of the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders happened in the poorest areas of the country – and independent monitors believe the number of those killed could be much higher.