A Philippine law enforcement agency filed bribery, graft and drug-related complaints against a senator and former minister yesterday, in the first step towards prosecuting the biggest critic of president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs.
The cases were lodged by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Philippine equivalent of the US
Federal Bureau of Investigation, against Senator Leila de Lima, two former prison officials and a dozen inmates for involvement in the illegal drug trade at a national jail.
“It is evident from the revelations of numerous witnesses as detailed in their sworn affidavits that...de Lima was fully aware of the unlawfulness of their actions,” said the NBI complaint.
De Lima, a former justice secretary, has been trying for years to link Duterte to involvement in large numbers of drug killings when he was mayor of Davao, long before he became president and launched a similar crackdown on a national scale.
More than 2,300 people have been killed in the four-month campaign, mostly in police operations to arrest suspects and others classified as deaths under investigation and believed to be the work of vigilantes.
The NBI said de Lima had protected a favoured inmate at the prison to facilitate illegal drug deals in exchange for money she collected every month. The case was filed before the justice department.
“I’m no longer surprised when this administration files trumped-up charges against me,” de Lima said in a statement.
She described the evidence against her as “fantastic lies and fairytales”.
On Monday she lodged a writ with the Supreme Court seeking to stop what she called harassment and intrusion into her private life by Duterte and his allies.
The NBI gathered testimonies from the recent congressional hearings about the prison drugs trade, which were launched just days after de Lima was ousted by fellow senators as head of a senate probe into Duterte’s crackdown.
The case includes documentary evidence and interviews with more witnesses about a lucrative illicit drug trade in prisons it said had the approval of de Lima.
If the cases go to court and de Lima is found guilty, she faces up to 30 years in prison.
President Rodrigo Duterte is not at all bothered by the petition for writ of habeas data that senator Leila de Lima filed against him before the supreme court (SC).
“I don’t know what my sins are.
So, I’d rather leave it to the court.
If there are cases filed already,” the president said Wednesday at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport before leaving for Thailand and Malaysia.
The senator filed a petition for habeas data, as she sought to defend herself from the president’s accusations.
The petition asked the high court to order Duterte to stop collecting information and material against De Lima from any source to be used in a “shame campaign” against her which the senator said violated her constitutional right.
On Tuesday, the SC asked De Lima and the office of the solicitor general to submit within 10 days their respective memorandums on the issue of whether the president is immune from suit.
“Mine was just to make public what was or is the corruption of the day and how drugs operate inside our penal institutions, not only in Muntinlupa. And to this day, they are still making money from the inside,” Duterte said.
It’s not enough that drug lords are arrested and jailed as they still are able to operate from inside prison, he added.
“The drug traffic in the Philippines originates from inside the prisons.
The drug lords are the ones with the contacts outside and they are also the only ones able to issue orders. Any other guy would not do. But most of these guys are now in prison.They continued to direct the traffic of drugs, cocaine, heroin, from their prison cell,” he said.
“It’s not enough that they are in prison.
They have to be immobilised,” the president added.
Duterte has claimed that it was De Lima who has turned the country into a “narco-state”. De Lima, who has been included in the so-called Bilibid drug matrix along with several others, has strongly denied any such involvement.
Duterte’s chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, believes De Lima’s petition against the president would not pass scrutiny.
“We are still studying the petition for writ of habeas data filed by senator De Lima, but it would appear that the filing of the petition is based on the argument that the president is abusing his authority in pursuing a supposed personal vendetta against the senator, and therefore not immune from suit.
Senator De Lima also said that the president cannot intrude into her private life.
This has no merit,” Panelo said in a statement.
He insisted that the president can pry into De Lima’s personal affairs if it affects her public life.
“A public official’s private life cannot be segregated from his or her public life, especially when the former affects the latter.
This is true whether the public official is a man or a woman.
If senator De Lima feels that the president is taking her actions personally, it is because he is.
Any Filipino who truly loves his or her country and fellow citizens in fact should.
Further, he or she must do all that can be done within the bounds of the law to stop the drug menace.
This is simply what the president is doing,” Panelo added.