SEVEN more Bilibid inmates who testified against former senator Leila de Lima in the drug charges filed against her by the government have informed the Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court that they are recanting their testimonies, saying they were just forced to testify against her.
In a three-page handwritten letter dated Nov. 17, 2023, inmates German Agojo, Jaime Patcho, Tomas Donina, Wu Tuan Yuan alias Peter Co, Jerry Pepino, Engelberto Duran, and Hans Anton Tan asked the court’s permission to recant their testimonies against De Lima.
They also expressed their “sincerest apologies” to the former senator, who was released on bail last week after nearly seven years of incarceration.
In his ruling allowing De Lima to post bail, Muntinlupa RTC Branch 206 Presiding Judge Gener Gito pointed out that the prosecution failed to sufficiently establish the guilt of De Lima and her co-accused due to a lack of substantial evidence.
The seven inmates said they are withdrawing their testimonies linking De Lima to the drug trade in the interest of truth and justice.
“We, the undersigned Persons Deprived of Liberty presently confined at the Sablayan Prison and Penal Farm (SPPF), who testified against the former DOJ Secretary and former Senator Leila de Lima, would like to recant our previous testimonies against the latter in the interest of truth and justice,” the seven inmates said in their letter.
“We are aware that by doing this, we are risking our lives and the safety and security of our families. However, we firmly believe in the saying ‘the truth shall set you free.’ At this point, we would like to state that our participation as witnesses in the drug cases against former DOJ Secretary de Lima was vitiated by undue compulsion and influence, and thus, any judicial statement made by us, is void of lack of consent,” they added.
De Lima, through her lead counsel, Boni Tacardon, asked the Muntinlupa RTC to bring in the seven inmates and said they should be asked to “confirm the veracity of their claims.”
She also asked the court to order their transfer from the SPPF to another detention facility inside the national penitentiary, subject to the “authenticity and truthfulness” of their claim in their letter.
The seven claimed that before linking De Lima to the narcotics trade, their lives were threatened, citing several stabbing incidents in the national penitentiary and alleged attempts on their lives when they were detained at Fort Bonifacio and Camp Aguinaldo before they were transferred to the SPPF this year.
“Prior to our forced participation as witnesses against Senator de Lima, we faced unimaginable threats to our lives as the only choice we had then was to testify against the good senator. Proof that such threats to our lives were real and imminent was the stabbing incidents that transpired at the NBP premises in September 2016 resulting in the actual death of one PDL, and seriously injuring several others,” they said.
“These were followed by a series of attempts on our lives after we were transferred to the Philippine Marine Detention Facilities in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City and the Custodial Detention Center at Camp Aguinaldo, Quezon City,” they added.
But the seven did not say who threatened or coerced them into linking De Lima to the drug trade.
Then DOJ Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said a certain Tony Co, an inmate at the national penitentiary, died after a riot inside Building 14 of the maximum-security compound on September 28, 2016.
Aguirre also said high-profile Bilibid inmates Peter Co, Vicente Sy, Jaybee Sebastian and former police officer Clarence Dongail were among those injured in the same incident.
Sebastian later succumbed to the COVID-19 virus in 2020, according to prison officials.
Aside from asking for permission from Gito to recant their testimonies, the seven also asked that they be transferred from SPPF to another detention facility.
“We no longer desire to live our lives with the knowledge that we allowed ourselves to become pawns or instruments of injustice. We wish to live a life of dignity, integrity and responsibility moving forward,” they said.
“We would like to be given that chance should you allow us to recant our testimonies and statements in the aforementioned cases against former Senator de Lima. If given the chance, it will be our way of expressing our sincerest apologies to Senator de Lima and her family,” they added.
Last month, two other Bilibid inmates — Nonito Arile and Rodolfo Magleo — informed the court of their desire to recant their testimonies against De Lima.
With this development, the prosecution was left with just five inmate witnesses against De Lima, namely, Noel Martinez, Renante Diaz, Joel Capones, Jojo Baligad, and Herbert Colanggo.
Their testimonies were among those presented against the bail petition of de Lima and her co-accused in the remaining drug case being handled by Gito.
Before this, prosecution witnesses and self-confessed drug lord Kerwin, Ronnie Dayan Espinosa and former BuCor OIC Rafael Ragos also withdrew their testimonies against De Lima.
Espinosa said the police forced him to implicate the former senator in the illegal drugs trade while Ragos claimed that former DOJ Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II forced him to concoct a story to link De Lima to the drug trade, a claim that Aguirre vehemently denied.
Ragos also pointed to former DOJ Undersecretary Raymund Mecate, National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Directors Rachel Angeles and Vicente De Guzman and State Prosecutor Laurence Joel Taliping as among those who pressured him to testify against De Lima.
Dayan claimed the late Oriental Mindoro congressman Reynaldo “Rey” Umali allegedly forced him to testify.
Umali, who died in 2021 due to liver cancer, led the House investigation on De Lima’s alleged link to drug syndicates.
State prosecutors accused De Lima and her co-accused of tolerating the illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary from May 2013 to May 2015 when she served as the Justice Secretary.
De Lima had repeatedly denied the accusations, claiming she was a victim of a political witch hunt by former President Rodrigo Duterte.
She said she earned the ire of Duterte due to her vocal stance against his administration’s bloody crackdown on illegal drugs and human rights violations.
De Lima had earlier won two of the three drug cases lodged against her, one through a demurrer of evidence in February 2021 and the other through lack of merit of the prosecution’s case last May.
