Department of Justice drops charges against drug lords

In launching his war on drugs, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said that he would go after all drug pushers, no matter who they were.

Thousands of street-level sellers have been killed because of this, but it was announced yesterday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has dropped its charges against high-profile drug lords.

Last year, Peter Go Lim, Rolando “Kerwin” Espinosa Jr., and Peter Co were charged for violating Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. The DOJ cleared them of the charges in a resolution dated Dec. 20, 2017, announced to the public yesterday.

The charges were dropped because statements made by drug runner Marcelo Adorco, who was also cleared of charges, were thought to be “rife with inconsistencies and contradictions” by the DOJ.

Espinosa confessed to being a drug distributor in 2016. During a senate hearing, he named Lim as one of his suppliers. Meanwhile, Espinosa’s father, the late Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. said that Co, a convicted drug trafficker, also supplied his son drugs. Espinosa is currently detained for other drug-related charges.

Both Lim and Co were included in Duterte’s list of high-profile drug lords released in July 2016, less than a month after he took office. According to Malacañang, Co handles the illegal drug trade in Luzon and the National Capital Region, where Metro Manila is, while Lim is in charge of the illegal drug trade in the Visayas.

Apart from the three men, more than 20 others were also cleared of drug-related charges in the DOJ resolution.

Senator Richard Gordon criticized the DOJ for clearing the charges against Espinosa because he already admitted to running a syndicate.

“It’s terrible, it’s terrible. All of us at the senate are downhearted because how can you absolve him, he already confessed,” Gordon said in Filipino during an interview in radio station DZMM today.

However, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said today that the dropping of charges is just a “slight bump on the war against drugs.”

“It is likewise a wake up to all concerned that our efforts, from apprehension to resolution to conviction must be concerted and thorough,” he said in a statement.

Aguirre also said that his office will review the case through a motion of reconsideration or an automatic review. “Suffice it to say that the current status of the case against the respondents Peter Lim et al., does not mean that it is a final exoneration of their respective criminal liabilities,” he said.

While these two powerful and wealthy alleged drug lords have gotten off the hook, according to the Philippine National Police, the war on drugs has killed almost 4,000 people — mostly poor Filipinos — without undergoing a trial.