MANILA, Philippines — Opposition Sen. Leila de Lima questioned Sunday the "trend of witnesses dying" as she raised the possibility of foul play after the second straight death of a former witness against her amid the coronavirus pandemic.
This comes after Vincent Sy, a convicted drug lord who once testified against De Lima, suddenly died of a heart attack on Thursday, July 29.
Sy, who previously testified and said that he contributed half a million pesos to De Lima's senatorial campaign in 2012, eventually retracted his claims and admitted he did not know De Lima according to the senator's lawyer.
"It's not remote that any, some, if not all, of these prosecution witnesses who were either coerced, threatened, bribed or blackmailed to lie about my alleged drug links would be targeted for extermination in order to permanently silence them from exposing the truth about my cases," the senator said in a dispatch from her cell in Camp Crame.
"This beleaguering trend of witnesses dying still does not give comfort to me who is waiting for their eventual revelation on who are behind these fabricated charges filed against me. As they say, dead men tell no tales. And it appears that my persecutors are sticking to the malevolent wisdom of this saying. As if the truth can be eternally buried or is not inevitable. As if there's no day of reckoning."
The death of Sy is only the second high-profile death linked to De Lima's case after drug convict Jaybee Sebastian also succumbed to the coronavirus in July last year. Former Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II accused him of running a funding campaign to support De Lima's Senate run in 2016.
READ: Drug lord admits he never met De Lima or financed her senatorial campaign — lawyer
"I believe and maintain, to this day, that it was a case of deliberate killing in order to block his then impending retraction of his affidavit falsely implicating me in the Bilibid drug trade," she said Sunday of Sebastian's death.
De Lima was jailed in 2017 over drug charges filed by the Department of Justice. She is accused of involvement in the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison when she was Justice secretary during the presidency of Benigno Aquino III.
The senator has long been an outspoken critic of the Duterte administration and once attempted to investigate the existence of an alleged "Davao Death Squad" while Justice Secretary and later when she was chair of the Commission on Human Rights.
De Lima did not mince words Sunday, raising the possibility of foul play behind Sy's recent death.
"Ano na naman ito!? Meron na naman namatay (o pinatay?) na high-profile inmate sa Bilibid. At cardiac arrest naman daw ang dahilan," De Lima said.
(What is this? Another high-profile died (or was killed?) in Bilibid. And cardiac arrest is the reason this time.)
"Sino kaya ang isusunod nila? (I wonder who will come next?)"
De Lima was acquitted earlier this year in one of three drug cases against her. The two others remain pending in separate courts, though she has yet to be convicted of any crimes. She claims the charges against her are politically motivated and are made up.
— with reports from Bella Perez-Rubio