DAVAO CITY”•President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday he had no intention to talk to high-profile inmate Jaybee Sebastian no matter how vital the information he was holding.
“I do not talk to criminals,” he said.
“He can go to the fiscal if he wants. Or maybe write a letter to Secretary [Perfecto] Yasay if that is feasible.”
Sebastian’s lawyer Eduardo Arriba earlier said his client would only reveal the information he was holding to the President.
Arriba made his statement even as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines called on the government to hold a “correction summit,” claiming an investigation in the House of Representatives had failed to address the problem of illegal drugs in the New Bilibid Prison.
Rodolfo Diamante, executive secretary of the CBCP’s Commission on Prison and Pastoral Care, said the House inquiry did not seem to be addressing the problems at the national penitentiary.
“Our suggestion is to hold a correctional summit that will be initiated by Congress, wherein experts in penology and in the correctional field can provide us the solutions we need,” Diamante said.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said Arriba should contact him instead if Sebastian would be willing to reveal the information he was holding.
“If he wants to talk to me, I am going to talk to him,” he said.
But Aguirre denied Arrriba’s claim that Sebastian’s testimony would affect the testimonies of the other witnesses in the illegal drug trade and the other information that the government was holding.
He said the information the government was holding was enough to complete the House’s investigation.
He said that they may no longer present inmates as witnesses but the close-in security of Secretary Leila de Lima instead.
He said Sebastian was requesting to reveal only a quarter of the information he was holding, which was not acceptable.
“I said just tell the whole truth. No parameters,” Aguirre said.