“Let’s collaborate on a jailbreak,” Sara Duterte preached to the choir. Her audience of course was her family’s Duterte Diehard Supporters. The occasion was an interview she gave outside Scheveningen Prison in The Hague to the DDS vlogger Alvin Dave Sarzate. I saw the interview.
By now we are all accustomed to the kind of talk by Sara and her siblings: spiteful out of petty revenge or a sense of entitlement, threatening to instill a state of fear or intimidation, domineering to ask for control and deference. It is the kind of talk honed by Davao City folks for 39 years now since Rodrigo Duterte became an officer-in-charge mayor on May 2, 1986.
That length of time has given the Dutertes the license of lordship over the people of Davao City, at which time no one accosts them; no media has the guts to call them out. It is not just a license of lordship. It is an express ticket to corruption because no participative citizenship is formed in the process. Sarzate, whose vlog goes by the name of Alvin and Tourism, is that kind of citizen – deferential and submissive to the Dutertes.
His vlogs that air from outside Scheveningen Prison are devoid of any critical thinking. Instead they are praise releases to “VP Sara, Cong Pulong, Cong Omar, Mayor Baste, Pretty Kitty and Mam Honeylet.” For these DDS, the Dutertes are treated like titled royalties.
Unlike us Filipinos, however, the International Criminal Court operates from a culture of law. A public pronouncement of jailbreak not just from a member of the Duterte family, but from a high official of the Philippines is at the very least a cause for admonition.
To be instructive, here’s why a jailbreak is, first of all, an impossible venture for Sara Duterte.
The ICC Detention Center where the prisoner Duterte is confined is a prison within a prison. It is located inside a larger prison complex called Scheveningen Prison that belongs to the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Dutch government is merely hosting a space inside Scheveningen for the ICC Detention Center that is not under Dutch law but international law.
The prison complex itself is deemed safe and secure so that a successful jailbreak is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. While the ICC Detention Center has its own internal security, the Scheveningen Prison also has. Any jailbreaker will have to break the security lines of two prisons.
Dutch laws on jailbreaks are entirely different from our penology laws. In the Netherlands, the attempt to escape is not inherently illegal. However, an escapee that causes property damage, injuries, or theft during one’s attempt would face the consequences of Dutch law. A captured escapee can face legal penalties and worse, could lead to lengthy prison sentences.
The Netherlands itself is a country with a robust prison security system. A jailbreak or escape would be highly unlikely to be successful. Prisons in the Netherlands are designed with advanced security features to deter escapes. One difficulty would be how to break the digital system of a prison facility.
Every year, the municipality of The Hague holds the “Hack The Hague” event where professional and student hackers are invited to search for vulnerabilities in the digital systems. The hackers are then required to report any vulnerability they find to the municipality, rather than exploit them for illegal purposes. For one, the government knows who the hackers are.
Sara Duterte probably thought that like when she speaks in Davao City, she is free to say anything without the consequential responsibility. Her father of course, spoke with the same braggadocio. Sara and her siblings acquired the same narcissism complex. This is the part of the Duterte dysfunctionality that an expensive lawyer like Nicolas Kaufman was not ready for.
Unknown to Sara, the ICC monitors their every move even outside the walls of the prison complex, even the humbâ war of the petty Harry Roque. When she uttered that statement of the jailbreak, the statement reached the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor.
Now the three judges of the pre-trial chamber will have to rule on when to re-schedule the postponed confirmation of charges, and then to rule on Kaufman’s request for a temporary liberty to the prisoner Duterte.
Unfortunately, the Sara jailbreak statement will be one consideration the judges will rule on. Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang filed 8 pages of manifestation on August 28 and released on the ICC website on September 12.
“Mr. Duterte’s family members have continued to reject the legitimacy of his legal proceedings before the Court. For example, on 19 July 2025, Sara Duterte, the current Vice President of the Philippines, spoke in front of a crowd in The Hague and was interviewed afterwards. During this event, she repeated the claim that Mr. Duterte was ‘kidnapped’ by the ICC and stated that it was ‘illegal’ to bring him to the Court.”
“She also told supporters, supposedly in jest, that she had discussed breaking Mr. Duterte out of the ICC Detention Unit with a colleague. She reportedly made similar comments during a Facebook live stream while in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, allegedly stating ‘let’s all collaborate on a jailbreak.’”
“She (Sara Duterte) also blamed the Government of the Netherlands for having joined the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of Mr. Duterte, and blamed the ICC for accepting Mr. Duterte ‘with open arms’ despite having been ‘kidnapped from his own land.’”
“These examples demonstrate a pattern of the Duterte family refusing to accept the legitimacy of the legal proceedings against Mr. Duterte and should militate against granting his interim release.”
Shortly after this appeared in the press, Alvin Dave Sarzate removed the episode where Sara Duterte advocated for a jailbreak.
These people are afraid after all when they are told the legal consequences of their actions. That is how to rein in the lawlessness of the Dutertes. It is unfortunate that we have a weakling of a president who is soft on the Dutertes even as he has the power to bring them before the bar of justice that has never been done before.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is no different from the terrorized people of Davao City.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.