Leila de Lima release urged after witnesses retract testimony

Philippine senator and vocal Duterte critic has been imprisoned for five years over drugs charges she denies. De Lima, a vocal critic of President Rodrigo Duterte and his controversial “war on drugs”, has been in custody since February 2017, accused of taking drug money while she was justice secretary. “Senator Leila de Lima has suffered five years in detention for an alleged crime that key witnesses now dispute,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch said in a statement. “The authorities should immediately drop the politically motivated charges and release her, and impartially investigate the witnesses’ claims that they were coerced to give false testimony.” Rafael Ragos, who was an officer-in-charge of the Bureau of Corrections in 2012, now says earlier court testimony that he delivered money from drug lords to de Lima was “false” and coerced “upon the instructions of Secretary Aguirre,” referring to Duterte’s justice secretary, Vitaliano Aguirre. In an affidavit, Kerwin Espinosa said the statement he made before the upper house in November 2016 which implicated de Lima in illegal drugs was “false” and the result of “pressure, coercion, intimidation, and serious threats to his life and family members from the police who instructed him to implicate the Senator into the illegal drug trade”.