Court to decide on Kenyan’s fate today
THREE months after she underwent trial, the fate of the Kenyan national caught with three kilos of shabu in her baggage at the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) will be known today.
Regional Trial Court Judge Toribio Quiwag of Branch 27 will announce his ruling on Aska Atieno Ogutu at the 2:00 pm. hearing.
Ogutu’s lawyer Ricardo Amores said believes his client will be cleared by the court.
“Our evidence is okay. It depends on the court to appreciate them,” Amores told Cebu Daily News.
Amores said they will seek the intervention of the Supreme Court in case Ogutu is convicted.
He said agents of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) failed to secure a search warrant despite having advance information on the transport of illegal drugs to Cebu.
Article continues after this advertisementLapu-Lapu City Asst. Prosecutor Dinah Portugal admitted that while the NBI-7 agents had no warrant, they conducted a “valid warrantless search.”
Article continues after this advertisementShe said there wasn’t enough time for the agents to secure a search warrant.
Amores said Ogutu also had no control over the baggage from her point of origin to the Mactan Cebu International Airport.
He said Ogutu’s suitcase may have been switched with the one found to contain the shabu.
When she testified in court, Ogutu said she never saw illegal drugs in her life until she was arrested at the airport last Sept. 29, 2011. Ogutu was the lone witness for her defense.
The 24-year-old single mother of two boys, is detained in the Lapu-Lapu City jail.
Ogutu left Benin in Africa on Sept. 27 on a flight that took her to Addis Ababa, Dubai and Doha, Qatar before she landed at the MCIA.
Ogutu said it was her friend who packed her belongings in a brown suitcase when she left Benin.
She said she got the same bag when she arrived in Cebu.
NBI agents arrested Ogutu after being tipped off about a drug courier delivering shabu on an international flight from Doha, Qatar on board a Qatar Airways flight.
The shabu seized from Ogutu was reportedly worth P18 million. Reporter Ador Vincent Mayol
