De Lima, anti-Duterte champion, acquitted after six years in prison
The court dismissed the last three cases against the 64-year-old former senator who paid a hefty price for her fight against the former president's "war on drugs" and its abuses. Outside the courthouse, her supporters were jubilant. She was falsely accused of funding her 2016 senatorial campaign with drug money.
Manila (AsiaNews) – A Philippine court this morning acquitted 64-year-old Leila de Lima, perhaps the staunchest and most combative critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte and his brutal “war on drugs”.
This was the last of three cases in which she was involved. The court dismissed charges of drug trafficking against the former senator, her lawyer Filibon Tacardon told the press.
The politician and activist faced and won many legal battles, paying her struggle for rights and freedoms with years of prison, not to mention the lies promoted by the former head of state and the tens of thousands of deaths and extrajudicial killings.
The final charge concerned allegations that she took money from inmates inside the country’s largest prison to allow them to sell drugs while she was justice minister from 2010 to 2015.
In October 2022, De Lima almost died at the hands of an inmate, who held her hostage inside the Philippine National Police Custodial Center, considered a maximum-security facility.
Commenting on the incident at the time, De Lima herself said: “I don’t think I would have come out alive.”
The former senator was greeted by jubilant supporters outside the courthouse, at the end of a legal marathon that began in 2017 with several charges, a few months after the start of a Senate investigation into Duterte's anti-drug campaign.
Critics and human rights groups claim that police summarily executed drug suspects as part of this campaign, while thousands died under mysterious circumstances at the hands of law enforcement officials who said that they acted in self-defence.
For his part, the former president, whose term expired in 2022, is facing a probe by the International Criminal Court.
De Lima spent six years and eight months in pre-trial detention, without any real evidence, and was only released last November on health grounds, reiterating her will to fight for justice.
The former senator is the perfect example of how Rodrigo Duterte tried to silence the opposition and his critics.
The senator had strongly criticised the former president for his brutal war on drugs during which nearly 30,000 people died, according to estimates by several human rights groups.
For her fight for rights and against violations, prosecutors accused her of enabling illegal drug trafficking in New Bilibid prison during her tenure as minister of justice, using the proceeds to finance her senatorial campaign in 2016.
Over the years, she has unwaveringly rejected the charges, insisting that they were politically motivated; in fact, after Duterte left office, many witnesses who had testified against the senator changed their testimony.
Under the current president, Ferdinand Marco Jr., son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the anti-drug campaign was scaled back.
At the time of De Lima’s arrest, the Philippine Church, also highly critical of Duterte's war on drugs, spoke out in favour of the senator, slamming her arrest.
Speaking to AsiaNews in March 2017, the then auxiliary bishop of Manila, Mgr Broderick S. Pabillo, called it a “political vendetta” after she launched investigation into the president’s doings. “Duterte and his minions just want[ed] to get back at her,” the prelate said.
“I personally believe that the Church should speak out,” he explained, “not only to voice opposition to the death policies of the President but more to educate the people so that they may not get the idea that killing is the solution to our problems.”
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