(Eagle News) – “A miscarriage of justice.”
This was how Senator Leila De Lima described on Wednesday, April 18, the Supreme Court’s dismissal of her appeal of its previous decision that junked her petition questioning, among others, the validity of the drug charges filed against her.
“After all, my legal team, led by former Solicitor General Florin T. Hilbay, has more than ably presented and argued our position that the allegations in the Information amount to no crime at all…none of the inculpatory allegations are attributable to me,” she said in arguing that the arrest warrant against her should be nullified.
According to De Lima, this was because the allegations “all pertained to the self-confessed drug lords who allegedly traded illegal drugs and delivered money to persons other than me.”
“At most, the allegations amount to bribery, which falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Sandiganbayan to hear, try and decide,” she said.
According to De Lima, some members of the Supreme Court even agreed that this should have been the charge.
“Only” five of the nine justices, she said, agreed that the crime charged should have been illegal drug trading, or the original accusation of the Department of Justice, and not conspiracy to commit drug trading, or the amended charge.
“Even as the Supreme Court voted–9 to 6–to dismiss my petition, the separate opinions of the members of the Court showed that there was absolutely no consensus as to what is the true nature of the charge against me,” she said.
She added that the DOJ panel of prosecutors amendment of the information against her was “a clear admission that they are unable to allege, much less prove, the corpus delicti that would qualify the case against me as ‘drug charges’, whether consummated or mere conspiracy.”
In the end, she said all these “merely prove that my case is not about prosecution, but persecution.”
“They don’t care about charging me with the ‘correct’ offense. They don’t even care about holding real drug lords accountable. This is not about winning the “War against Drugs”. All they really want is to detain me indefinitely, in order to prevent me from performing my mandate as a duly elected Senator of the Republic. This is about winning the “War against De Lima,” she said.
“Nevertheless, I vow to continue fighting for my innocence. Because I am innocent. No lie can ever change that fact,” she added.
De Lima is detained in Camp Crame.