Sen. Leila de Lima—MARIANNE BERMUDEZ/INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
From her detention at Camp Crame, Senator Leila de Lima criticized some of her colleagues in the Senate who believed “hook, line and sinker” the drug allegations hurled at her.
“It hurts that some of my colleagues apparently believe (or choose to believe, for their own reasons (and) prejudices) the lies being assiduously (and) relentlessly peddled about me by the likes of Alvarez, Aguirre, Calida, Jimenez, Topacio & Sandra Cam,” she said in a two-page handwritten statement on Tuesday.
BACKSTORY: De Lima ‘hurt’ by colleagues’ doubts over alleged drug ties
The senator was apparently referring to Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, Solicitor General Jose Calida, Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) chair Dante Jimenez, VACC lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, and former jueteng whistleblower Sandra Cam.
“Judging from their body language (and) line of questioning during a Senate inquiry, a handful of my colleagues were predisposed at accepting, hook, line (and) sinker, the perjurious (albeit coerced I believe) [the] testimonies of Kerwin Espinosa & Ronnie Dayan about me being an alleged beneficiary of drug money from Espinosa, [in spite] of the glaring, even irreconcilable inconsistencies in their respective stories,” she said.
Espinosa, alleged big drug lord in Eastern Visayas, and Dayan, de Lima’s former driver and lover, had implicated the senator in the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison when she was still justice secretary.
De Lima noted that one of her colleagues was even “badgering Dayan in my presence, into implicating me in the drug trade.”
“So, who’s disrespecting who? May God bless them…” added the senator, who has been in detention since last February 24 over drug charges.
READ: De Lima finds solace in the written word
She has repeatedly denied any involvement in illegal drugs, saying all accusations against her were politically motivated after she initiated a Senate probe on alleged extrajudicial killings in the country since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office. IDL/rga
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