FORMER Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) general manager and retired police colonel Royina Garma is seeking asylum in the United States, her lawyer said yesterday.
Lawyer Emerito Quilang said he is not privy to details of Garma’s asylum application as she has a lawyer in the US handling the matter.
He said he only knows that the hearing on his client’s asylum request scheduled last April 2 did not push through.
“I’m not privy to the things happening there in the asylum. What I know is that the asylum was set for initial hearing on April 2 but it was canceled and there is no setting yet,” Quilang told reporters in an ambush interview at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“There is another lawyer handling the asylum case in the US,” he added.
Quilang was at the DOJ for the preliminary investigation for the murder and frustrated murder complaints filed against Garma by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) in connection with the 2020 killing of retired police general and PCSO board secretary Wesley Barayuga and the wounding of his driver.
Asked when his client applied for asylum, Quilang said it may have been filed after she arrived in the US on November 7, 2024 when she and her daughter were arrested and detained by authorities in California.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla previously said Garma and her daughter were held by US border control officers upon their arrival due to their cancelled US visas.
Remulla later said Garma was held due to her alleged involvement in money laundering activities.
Quilang denied Remulla’s claim, saying she was detained due to visa-related issues, and not for alleged money laundering activities or the Magnitsky Act, a law against alleged human rights offenders.
“That’s not true. She does not have any property in the US. She is in detention because she went there without the necessary papers so upon landing there they took her. Wala daw siyang (She did not have a) visa that is why she was held when she landed there in the US,” he explained.
Garma went to the US after she testified in a congressional inquiry that then president Rodrigo Duterte asked for her help in the implementation of his nationwide anti-drug crackdown.
She later on exposed the supposed drug killings reward scheme, where police officers were allegedly given cash rewards whenever they kill drug suspects.
Despite several months of detention and the cancellation of the April 2 hearing on her asylum request, Quilang said Garma is in upbeat spirit.
“I was able to talk to her last night (Sunday night). She told me she is still in detention,” he said.
Meanwhile, Quilang said they will file her counter-affidavit on the Barayuga case on or before May 2.
“We want to avail of that last day which is May 2, we would be putting our defenses. Of course, our defense there is she does not have any participation,” he said.
Aside from Garma, also charged with murder and frustrated murder are resigned National Police Commission commissioner Edilberto Leonardo, Jeremy Zapata Causapin alias Toks, Police Lt. Col. Santie Fuentes Mendoza and Nelson Enriquez Mariano.
Mendoza and Mariano tagged Garma and Leonardo as the masterminds in the killing of Barayuga on July 30, 2020 in Mandaluyong City.
Garma and Leonardo have both denied the allegations.
