The hashtag #FreeLeilaDeLima has seen new life after a Philippine court has dismissed one of the two remaining drug charges against Leila de Lima, a former senator known for her vocal criticism of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
Leila de Lima was taken into custody in 2017, accused of accepting drug money shortly after initiating a Senate investigation into Duterte’s controversial “war on drugs,” which human rights organizations claim resulted in the deaths of thousands of primarily impoverished young men.
The 63-year-old former senator and justice minister, along with another defendant, has now been “acquitted of the crime charged on the ground of reasonable doubt,” according to a written statement from regional trial court judge Abraham Alcantara.
With this ruling, de Lima, who has been detained at the National Police Headquarters, moves one step closer to freedom. She has already been cleared of one of the other three charges that she and human rights groups have long maintained were fabricated.
De Lima stands accused of accepting money from prisoners in the country’s largest prison in exchange for permitting them to sell drugs during her tenure as justice minister from 2010 to 2015 under former President Benigno Aquino. However, as Duterte’s term neared its end, key witnesses began retracting their testimonies.
Last April, a self-confessed drug lord named Kerwin Espinosa issued an affidavit and apology, claiming that his previous statements against de Lima were the result of “pressure, coercion, intimidation, and serious threats to his life and his family.”
Furthermore, Rafael Ragos, a prosecution witness who served as an officer-in-charge of the Bureau of Corrections in 2012, later retracted his earlier court testimony, asserting that his statements implicating de Lima were “false” and coerced by Duterte’s justice secretary, Vitaliano Aguirre.
Following these retractions, de Lima’s defense team submitted a petition for bail regarding the remaining charge, awaiting the court’s ruling on the application.
In 2018, a United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that de Lima’s imprisonment was “arbitrary given the absence of a legal basis” and that her right to a fair trial had not been “respected.”
Efforts to secure de Lima’s release have intensified, with diplomats and human rights defenders calling for her freedom since President Ferdinand Marcos assumed power.
In 2009, as the head of the Philippine human rights commission, de Lima initiated an investigation into drug-related killings in the southern city of Davao, where Duterte served as mayor.
After assuming the presidency in 2016, when alleged drug dealers began to accumulate, de Lima launched a Senate investigation into the “drug war,” which she believed bore resemblance to the operations conducted by the notorious Davao Death Squad.
Duterte’s relentless “drug war” has now attracted the attention of the International Criminal Court, which is currently conducting an investigation into possible “crimes against humanity.”
A report by the United Nations in 2021 revealed that 8,663 individuals lost their lives in anti-drug operations. However, the Human Rights Commission of the Philippines, alongside local human rights organizations, contends that the actual death toll could be as much as three times higher.
