De Lima to BBM’s Justice Sec: 'Hope he would do the right thing'

By Mavic Conde

Outgoing Senator Leila de Lima hoped that the incoming justice secretary would be on the side of the truth.

"I certainly hope and pray that Rep. Boying Remulla would do the right thing. I would be grateful to the incoming DOJ Secretary if he will personally go over my cases, & see for himself the grave injustice done to me—how his predecessors have ignored and manipulated the law," De Lima said in a tweet. De Lima is detained for more than five years now due to drug charges which she insisted are baseless.

According to De Lima, the convicted Bilibid inmates being practically granted immunity in exchange for falsely testifying against her and the other accused is a form of selective prosecution. "A genuine, honest-to-goodness review of my cases will reveal the truth of my innocence," she added.

On May 27, the Muntinlupa court junked the DOJ's indirect contempt charge against her and her lawyer, Atty. Filibon Tacardon. The court declared that Atty. Tacardon "merely reported the admissions made by those witnesses," hence, not violative of the sub judice rule.

According to De Lima, the petition was baseless and frivolous from the very start, "designed to further silence me and my lawyers and to prevent us from relaying to the public how the prosecution cases are crumbling before the court."

De Lima emphasized that "the dismissal of this contempt charge should now convince the DOJ to review my cases."

Prior to this, Rafael Ragos, former Bureau of Corrections officer-in-charge and key witness in the trial of Sen. De Lima, as well as Kerwin Espinosa, and Ronnie Dayan have retracted their statements because they said they were all just coerced by Duterte officials into testifying against De Lima.