THE Office of the Ombudsman on Wednesday rejected the filing of a graft and torture complaint against Senator Leila de Lima because the complainant, convicted kidnapper Jaybee Sebastian and his wife Roxanne, the complainants, failed to appear.
Sebastian’s lawyer, Eduardo Arriba, went to the Ombudsman central office in Quezon City to file the complaint against De Lima.
However, the docket section refused to accept the documents and advised Arriba to come back Thursday since “the complainant needs to [personally] appear so that an oath may be administered.”
Sebastian accused the former Justice secretary of gross inexcusable negligence and violation of Anti-Torture Law for transferring him to Building 14 of the National Bilibid Prison’s maximum security compound amid threats to his life.
Arriba blamed De Lima over the attempt to kill Sebastian inside the national penitentiary on Sept. 28, saying Sebastian earned the wrath of the other inmates at the maximum security when De Lima claimed he was a government informant against the illegal drug trade.
He invoked the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, citing public officials who cause undue injury to a party in the discharge of his function through evident bad faith and gross inexcusable negligence should be penalized.
De Lima also committed violation of the Anti-Torture Act on Sebastian when she placed him in isolation from October 2014 to January 2016 after he was transferred to the national penitentiary’s Building 14, the complaint said.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II on Wednesday maintained that De Lima and her alleged lover Ronnie Dayan really have sex video.
Aguirre cited the affidavit submitted by De Lima’s former aide Joenel Sanchez who affirmed that he and other aides of De Lima saw two videos showing the former DOJ chief and Dayan in sexual acts.
“In his affidavit, Joenel said they saw two videos from the phone of Dayan,” Aguirre said, in an interview.
Sanchez narrated how he and the other security aides of De Lima played with Dayan’s mobile phone and discovered an intimate video.
“Joenel said he saw the videos. Dayan left his cell phone that’s why they fiddled with it and saw two sex videos,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said with Sanchez’s affidavit, there was no longer need to play the video before the House panel investigating the proliferation of drugs inside the New Bilibid Prison.
He added that Sanchez’s statement was sufficient to establish the intimate relationship between De Lima and Dayan.
Aguirre also said he never said he would present the video before the House hearing.
“I have never said I am going to play the video. It’s not with me. That’s why I don’t know why I am being asked by a congressman on why I said that,” Aguirre said.
Still, he said, the video remains legally vital.
“In court we have to prove their relationship, and we may use that in court but we need to authenticate it first,” he said.
Aguirre also implied that the money involved in illegal drug trade inside NBP could reach up to P15 billion.
“The P10 billion of [alleged pork barrel scam mastermind Janet] Napoles could be dwarfed by the amount of drug money in Bilibid,” he said.
“She had a security detail who deposited and withdrew from a specific bank account… There were several withdrawals of P300,000 from that account before the elections,” Aguirre said.
De Lima on Wednesday slammed President Rodrigo Duterte as a misogynist.
“I just never realized that aside from one flaming misogynist, sitting in the highest echelon of power, who thinks rape jokes are actually funny let alone worthy of a President, I would also be working closely with some of them,” she said.
“Women’s issues are trivialized by jokes…by the mentality that it’s okay to make jokes about them, and we are being ‘overly sensitive’ or ‘KJ’ by not finding them appropriate,” she added, referring to the joke of Duterte about an Australian missionary who was held hostage and raped inside the Davao City jail.
She also compared herself to a diamond—resilient and unbreakable.
