Manila: The justice department filed three criminal charges against Senator Leila de Lima in a regional trial court for her alleged involvement in illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary when she was a justice secretary.
Apart from violating two sections of the country’s Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, she was accused of criminal liability committed by a government official and employee, said the justice department which filed several complaints against de Lima in a regional trial court in Metro Manila’s suburban Muntinlupa on Friday.
The justice department received complaints filed against de Lima from members of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption, the National Bureau of Investigation, and convicted drug lord Jayvee Sebastian, an inmate at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa.
The lower court will assess the complaints before issuing warrants of arrest for de Lima and her co-accused, Franklin Jesus Bucayu, former head of the Bureau of Corrections.
The complaints stemmed from testimonies of several convicted drug lords in Senate hearings, who claimed that de Lima and her bagmen urged prisoners to raise funds for her campaign for the senate before the May 2016 polls. She was the justice secretary of former President Benigno Aquino.
Witnesses claimed that Filipino convicts were urged to trade illegal drug that they sourced from convicted Chinese drug lords, their fellow inmates. All of them were alleged to have given de Lima millions of pesos in drug payoffs.
They did not say who else benefited from the agreement.
De Lima denied the charges.
“This is travesty of truth and justice. (It’s) plain and simple political persecution. I will fight this out for as long as I can. They can never break my spirit,” de Lima said. As former Justice Secretary, and before that a Human Rights Commissioner, de Lima led investigations into alleged the summary executions carried out by former Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, who was elected president in the May 2016 national elections, during which de Lima also won a senatorial seat.
She also blamed President Duterte for heaping charges against her to stop her from continuing her crusade to investigate his alleged involvement in the political killings of more than 1,000 by members of the so-called Davao Death Squad when he was mayor in the southern Philippines.
De Lima has also led human rights advocates in complaining against Duterte’s campaign against illegal drug trade which has killed more than 7,000 since July.
The police claimed responsibility for 2,500 deaths and blamed drug syndicates for the other fatalities.
Before the May 2016 polls, Duterte campaigned to end illegal drug trade in the Philippines.
When he sat in office, he released names of lawmakers, top local government officials and police generals who protected drug lords.
De Lima was the highest official ever identified for the same wrongdoing.
