The militant Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called for the immediate dropping of charges against detained Senator Leila de Lima.
This developed as De Lima, who is seeking to regain her seat in the Senate, hailed the recent statement by six US senators renewing their call for her immediate release and dropping of the alleged trumped-up drug charges against her following the recantation by key witnesses of adverse testimonies made against her.
“The Philippine authorities should drop the charges against de Lima, release her from custody, and investigate allegations that the witness testimony was coerced,” the HRW said in a statement.
De Lima, 62, who has been in police custody since February 2017, was charged with alleging receiving bribes from drug lords while serving as Secretary of Justice.
She has vehemently denied the allegations, maintaining that the charges were a mere reprisal of the Duterte administration for her investigations of extrajudicial killings under the President’s anti-drug campaign.
“Senator Leila de Lima has suffered five years in detention for an alleged crime that key witnesses now dispute,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of the HRW.
“The authorities should immediately drop the politically motivated charges and release her, and impartially investigate the witnesses’ claims that they were coerced to give false testimony,” said Robertson.
Rafael Ragos, a former administrator of the Bureau of Corrections, in a sworn affidavit issued last April 30, retracted his testimony during De Lima’s trial saying he delivered bribe money to the then Justice secretary. His testimony led to the filing of the cases drug against the senator in 2017.
In his retraction, Ragos said his testimony was false and that he was coerced “upon the instructions of Secretary (Vitaliano) Aguirre,” referring to Duterte’s former Justice secretary.
In exchange for his false testimony, Ragos said he was dropped as a respondent in the same case and turned into a witness.
In a television interview, a teary-eyed Ragos apologized to De Lima. “My apologies. My heart is heavy that I aggrieved another person,” he said in Tagalog.
Prior to Ragos’ retraction, self-confessed drug lord Kerwin Espinosa also withdrew on April 28 his testimony made before senators in November 2016 implicating De Lima in illegal drugs.
“Any statement he made against the Senator are false and was the result only of pressure, coercion, intimidation, and serious threats to his life and family members from the police who instructed him to implicate the Senator into the illegal drug trade,” Espinosa’s affidavit stated.
He had earlier told a Senate committee hearing that he gave De Lima drug money through her driver and co-accused Ronnie Dayan. Espinosa’s testimony was not part of the cases against De Lima.
“The pro-Duterte Senate retaliated against De Lima for initiating a Senate investigation into the ‘drug war’ killings in 2016 by removing her as chair of the Senate committee on justice and human rights,” the HRW said.
“The administration subjected her to a misogynist propaganda campaign that included President Duterte threatening to release to the public a supposed sex video of her and her driver. The campaign against her culminated in the filing of three drug cases and her current detention at the national police headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, where she has now been held for five years. She was acquitted in one of the cases while the two others remain in the courts,” said Robertson.
“De Lima earlier incurred Duterte’s ire when, as chairperson of the governmental Commission on Human Rights, she launched an investigation in 2009 into extrajudicial killings by the so-called Davao Death Squad in Davao City, where Duterte was the longtime mayor. Duterte later vowed ‘to destroy’ de Lima,” said Robertson.
“The ‘war on drugs’ that de Lima has sought to stop has killed thousands of people, mostly from impoverished urban areas. Estimates of the death toll vary, but the government itself reports that the police alone have killed more than 6,200 people. Other estimates by the media and civil society groups reach into the tens of thousands.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has initiated an investigation into these killings. De Lima, meanwhile, has continued to perform her senate functions even while in detention and is running for re-election in the elections this May,” Robertson said.
“Senator de Lima should be included among the casualties of President Duterte’s catastrophic ‘drug war,’” Robertson said.
“The senator’s imprisonment is among the low points of Duterte’s presidency, and the thousands of families still suffering from his punitive policies would doubtlessly welcome her release,” he said.
De Lima thanked US Senators Marco Rubio, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Marsha Blackburn, Chris Coons and Patrick Leahy for consistently vouching for her innocence and renewing their call for her release.
“The recent development on my case, along with the unwavering trust and faith in me of prominent leaders and co-justice warriors, further bolsters my determination to fight against the lies and see this battle to end in freedom and vindication,” she said.
“After two witnesses recanted their allegations against me, it is clearer now that the charges against me are politically motivated, obviously invented by the Duterte machine of lies. I thank US Senators Marco Rubio, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Marsha Blackburn, Chris Coons and Patrick Leahy, for acknowledging the truth and staying consistent in demanding justice for me,” she added.
In a joint statement released last May 3, the six US senators stressed that the recent recanting by key witnesses of allegations made against De Lima “warrant her immediate release.”
“Clearly, the bogus charges against her were, as we suspected all along, politically-motivated and based on false information,” they said.
In the same statement, the US Senators stressed that the fact the De Lima “has lost five years in jail due to these spurious charges is a travesty,” adding that “she should be released immediately and any remaining charges should be dropped without further delay.”
In 2019, Rubio Senators and Markey filed a bipartisan resolution, logged as Senate Resolution No. 142, calling for her immediate release from wrongful imprisonment and invoking Global Magnitsky sanctions against her persecutors. It was supported by Senators Durbin, Blackburn and Coons.