De Lima prays for liberty by Holy Week

Senator Leila De Lima inside QC MeTC Branch 34 for her arraignment on disobedience to summon case. TETCH TORRES-TUPAS/INQUIRER.net

Detained Sen. Leila de Lima on Wednesday appealed for liberty before the Holy Week, hoping to make good on her vow to participate in the Good Friday procession in native Iriga City’s local parish.

In a new handwritten note issued from her cell, De Lima, who has been detained at a custodial facility in Camp Crame for nearly three weeks now, expressed her wish to be released before the Holy Week so she could continue participating in the Catholic ritual.

“I am solemnly praying that I will be released before the Holy Week. It has been my vow that, every year, I will join the Good Friday procession at our parish in Bicol, the Our Lady of Fatima Parish in Iriga City,” De Lima said.

“Join me in this prayer,” she wrote in Filipino.

De Lima wrote the note on Tuesday evening, following the first round of oral arguments on her bid for release before the Supreme Court. It is among her pending cases questioning her arrest over drug sale and trade charges lodged against her by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

She also has a pending plea to quash her arrest warrant at the sala of Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court Branch 204 Judge Juanita Guerrero, who ordered her arrest on Feb. 23. De Lima was taken into custody on Feb. 24.

De Lima, among the fiercest critics of President Duterte, is facing multiple charges of involvement in the drug sale after high-profile convicts testified before a legislative inquiry that she had profited from the illegal trade inside the national penitentiary during her time as justice secretary.

She has denied the charges many times, saying they were part of efforts to silence her for being an outspoken oppositor of the President’s controversial policies, particularly the bloody war on drugs.