MANILA, Philippines — Following her acquittal, ML party-list Rep. Leila de Lima is turning the tables on those who had her jailed over trumped-up charges, as she is set to file complaints against them.
From 2017, De Lima was detained for over 2,400 days at Camp Crame due to cases filed by the Duterte administration, seen by critics as retaliation for leading the Senate investigation on the regime’s bloody drug war.
Having been cleared of all the charges in June 2024, the party-list representative vows to fight back against her wrongful prosecution.
“Those who have actually coerced, threatened, and influenced, pressured certain witnesses,” De Lima told “Storycon” on One News on Monday.
“Those who were used as handlers of some of these witnesses who eventually recanted or signified their intention to recant,” she added.
One of those who will be charged is a “former justice secretary,” which could point to Vitaliano Aguirre II, who was leading the agency at the time of her arrest.
When witnesses began recanting their testimonies against De Lima, they cited Aguirre as one of those who coerced them.
Key witness Rafael Ragos, a former Bureau of Corrections chief, accused Aguirre of forcing him to sign prepared affidavits on three occasions in 2016 and 2017, which implicated De Lima received bribes from drug lords inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).
Ragos recanted his entire testimony in April 2022 after originally testifying that De Lima received a total of P10 million on Nov. 24, 2012 and Dec. 15, 2012, which were proceeds from illegal drug trading by convicts at the NBP.
Aguirre denied coercing Ragos, presenting a video in 2022 taken by the Public Attorney’s Office showing that the former BuCor chief testified freely and voluntarily against De Lima when he made his supplemental affidavit.
De Lima said she did not push through filing cases during the campaign to focus on the advocacies of ML, a newly formed party-list this election.
“I just wanted to really concentrate on the message that I want to convey to the people of the Philippines,” she stressed.