THE Justice Department has rejected insinuations it has struck deal with Marine Lt. Col. Ferdinand Marcelino in exchange for testifying against detained Senator Leila de Lima on the drug charges against her.
“There is no such deal. She is imagining things,” Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said when asked to react on De Lima’s accusation that his department dropped the drug charges against Marcelino in exchange for pinning her down in the illegal drug trade.
“Her conscience is just bothering her.”
De Lima is facing trial for her alleged involvement in drug trading inside the New Bilibid Prison when she was Justice secretary.
Marcelino’s lawyer, Public Attorneys’ Office chief Persida Rueda-Acosta, has also disputed De Lima’s latest claim.
She said Marcelino had submitted his affidavit against the senator even before the Justice Department indicted him in court and later on withdrew the case.
“There’s no deal,” Acosta said.
“He [Marcelino] already had an affidavit during the House committee on justice hearing on the Bilibid drug trade last year, and he went there to testify voluntarily but he was not allowed to testify”.
Acosta said the Justice Department’s decision to withdraw the case against Marcelino and his Chinese asset Yan Yi Shou was correct as it was upheld by Manila regional trial court branch 49 and was consistent with the earlier findings of the Quezon City RTC, which granted Marcelino’s bail petition.
“The order of the court finding the motion to withdraw information is meritorious and in accord with truth, justice and law,” Acosta said.
“That alleged deal is speculative.”
Acosta also questioned the motive of De Lima in raising the allegation.
“Why is she reacting like that? Does she expect Marcelino to have knowledge about her?” she said.
Aguirre and Acosta were reacting to De Lima’s allegation that a deal had been struck for Marcelino to testify against her when the department granted his petition for review and and to dismiss the charges against him and Yan.
“Isn’t that obvious? It’s too obvious and too brazen. After they dismissed his case, he will now testify against me,” De Lima was quoted in an ambush interview during a hearing in Quezon City.
Marcelino and Yan were ordered released from detention by Judge Daniel Villanueva of the Manila RTC branch 49 last Thursday after the Justice Department reversed its earlier resolution finding probable cause in the charges and withdrew the case against them.
The two were arrested in a drug bust in a house along Felix Huertas Street in Manila on Jan. 21, 2016, where PNP and PDEA agents seized P380 million worth of shabu.
However, the Justice Department held that the two had “sufficiently proven that they were in the performance of a lawful duty when they were chanced upon by Philippine National Police) and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency joint team.
Upon his release from detention, Marcelino said he was willing to testify in the cases against De Lima and vowed to tell only the truth.
In his earlier affidavit, Marcelino said that while he was detained at the PNP custodial center after his arrest, De Lima visited him and discussed the raid and dismantling of the shabu laboratory in Camiling, Tarlac, that stemmed from his counter-intelligence operation.
“We discussed the operation in the clandestine laboratory in Tarlac and the possible infiltration of the drug syndicate in the political leadership of which she said to me, ‘I can assure you the President is not involved’,” he recalled in his sworn statement.
The said raid on what was tagged as the biggest shabu laboratory took place during the previous administration, which meant the President being referred to was former President Aquino.
“I was stunned when she mentioned the President, when I did not even state his name or even allude to him at that time,” Marcelino said.