Suspected drug lord and fugitive Peter Lim remained a no-show during his scheduled arraignment in court on Tuesday.
Due to Lim’s nonappearance, Judge Gina Bibat-Palamos of the Makati City Regional Trial Court Branch 65 deferred the proceeding to Sept. 14.
However, his coaccused—self-confessed drug distributor Kerwin Espinosa and his former driver and associate Marcelo Adorco—entered a plea of not guilty.
Along with several others, the three men were charged by state prosecutors with two counts of conspiracy to commit drug trading on Aug. 10.
Warrant servers failed to find Lim, who is based in Cebu province, at the addresses he had provided authorities.
This prompted presidential spokesperson Harry Roque to ask him to surrender and prove his innocence in court.
The Makati court issued a hold departure order against Lim on Aug. 17. Justice Secretary Menandro Gueverra, citing records from the Bureau of Immigration, confirmed that the suspected drug lord was still in the country “unless he slipped [out] through the backdoor.”
Lim was identified by Adorco as the source of the crystal meth sold by Espinosa’s group in the Central Visayas and Eastern Visayas regions in 2013 and 2014.
President Duterte also tagged Lim as the bigtime drug lord known as alias “Jaguar,” a claim he denied.
Malacañang earlier clarified that the President did not personally know Lim, and that the only time they were together was when they stood as sponsors at a wedding in Lapu-Lapu City in 2016.