Senator Leila M. de Lima, a vocal opposition senator and leading critic of President Duterte’s deadly antidrug crackdown, was arrested on Friday on drug charges, but professed her innocence and vowed she would not be intimidated by a leader she called a “serial killer”.
De Lima’s arrest came a day after the Regional Trial Court in Muntinlupa City issued the warrant for her arrest, along with other officials who have been charged by state prosecutors for allegedly receiving bribes from detained drug lords.
De Lima has denied the charges, which, she said, were part of an attempt by Duterte to muzzle critics of his crackdown, which has left more than 7,000 drug suspects dead. She questioned why the court suddenly issued the arrest order, when it was scheduled on Friday to hear her petition to void the three nonbailable charges.
“If they think they can silence me, if they think I will no longer fight for my advocacies, especially on the truth on the daily killings and other intimidations of this Duterte regime, it’s my honor to be jailed for what I’ve been fighting for,” she said before policemen took her into custody at the Senate.
A police convoy, trailed by media vans, took de Lima to the main police camp, where officers will take her photograph and fingerprints before her detention.
Presidential Spokesman Ernesto C. Abella called de Lima’s arrest “a major step forward in the administration’s antidrug war”.
When de Lima headed the government’s Commission on Human Rights, she tried unsuccessfully to have Duterte prosecuted when he was mayor of Davao City for alleged unlawful deaths that occurred during an antidrug crackdown in the city. No witnesses came forward then to testify against the mayor, human-rights officials said.
Duterte expanded the crackdown nationwide after becoming president last June, and de Lima has continued to criticize him after winning a Senate seat last year.
In one of her strongest statements against the President this week, de Lima called Duterte a “sociopathic serial killer” who has not been made to answer for more than 1,000 deaths during his crackdown in Davao City as its mayor, and now for the thousands of drug suspects killed in his national fight against illegal drugs.
She urged Duterte’s Cabinet members to declare him unfit to serve as president. Justice Secretary Vitaliano N. Aguirre II warned that such remarks were seditious, but de Lima replied Aguirre and Duterte are “the rebels and inciters against a constitutional order that values life and due process above everything else”.
Prosecutors allege that de Lima, while she was justice secretary under former President Benigno S. Aquino III, received bribes from detained drug lords to finance her senatorial campaign, and they say some of the drug lords would testify against her.
The bribes were allegedly solicited by her former driver and lover, who was also charged and arrested on Thursday in northern Pangasinan province.
Duterte has lashed out at de Lima with foul language, calling her a sex-crazed immoral woman whose election opened “the portals of the national government… to narcopolitics”.
De Lima said the case against her might be the “wake-up call” the country needs, referring to the absence of a public outcry in the country over the killings in the antidrug campaign.
De Lima said people were starting to fight back, citing recent accounts by a former militiaman and a retired police officer, who acknowledged their roles as assassins in the Davao deaths and Duterte’s alleged involvement in the killings.
A court ordered de Lima’s arrest on Thursday, after she was indicted over allegations she let illegal drugs flourish inside the national jail during her time as justice secretary. Judge Juanita Guerrero found “sufficient probable cause” to issue the warrant, according to a copy of the order.
“I am innocent, and there is no truth to allegations that I benefited from the illegal-drugs trade, that I took drug money, that I protected drug convicts—these are all lies,” de Lima told reporters on Friday outside her Senate office, where she spent the night before surrendering to authorities.
De Lima has called the indictments politically motivated, and said they were meant to clamp down on her opposition to the President’s deadly drug war. She has been a critic of Duterte for years, leading the Commission on Human Rights when it investigated his drug war in Davao City when he was mayor.
Prosecutors last week filed three separate criminal complaints, accusing de Lima of conspiring to distribute illegal drugs dating back to when she had oversight of the prison system from 2010 until 2015. She could face life imprisonment and a fine if convicted.
Aguirre has denied pressuring prosecutors to indict the senator, saying probable cause was established after a careful study of the cases. Duterte, who has previously responded to her criticism by accusing her of drug trafficking and conducting an extramarital affair, was quoted by CNN Philippines last week as saying: “She will have to face the music”.
“We are really disappointed with this issuance, because there’s still a hearing tomorrow,” Alex Padilla, de Lima’s lawyer, told ABS-CBN on Thursday. “The court made a decision based on nothing.”
AP, Bloomberg News
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez, AP/Aaron Favila
1 comment
The whole country has witnessed through several personalities how De Lima systematically and carefully collected drug money from high profile drug dealers.
What she is going through is clearly a criminal case and never political because the case filed against her is strong and supported by reliable witnesses in which one happened to be her former driver and lover for 7 years.