Relatives of drug war victims held a thanksgiving mass as the former strongman President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested for crimes against humanity.

Footage shows tearful families in the deeply Catholic country praying at the Sacred Heart Parish in Manila, the Philippines, after Duterte was detained by police at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on March 11.

Flavie Villanueva, a priest at the church, said: 'To those saying Duterte is being abused... how was he abused? He killed 30,000. He abused our country.'

Duterte was arrested on March 11 morning at the country's state-owned airport on a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity.

He had initially refused to disembark the plane, telling officials: 'You will just have to kill me. I refuse if you will just ally with the whites.'

He was later seen boarding a police vehicle with his wife Honeylet Avancena and daughter Veronica. He had returned to the country on Cathay Pacific flight CX907 after meeting with overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong a day earlier.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., a former ally and now political rival of the influential Duterte family, defended the government's role in Duterte's arrest.

He said: 'Interpol asked for help and we obliged because we have commitments to Interpol which we have to fulfil. If we don't do that, they will no longer help us with other cases involving Filipino fugitives abroad. We cannot say no to Interpol when they ask us to catch a wanted individual.'

Duterte is the architect of the country's notorious bloody war on drugs, which police claimed saw more than 6,000 drug suspects killed. However, human rights groups said the alleged extrajudicial executions reached up to 30,000.

In 2018, Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it began investigating alleged human rights abuses linked to his war on drugs. He had argued that the ICC had no jurisdiction over the Philippines and accused it of being biased.