Philippines: Fierce Duterte Critic Leila de Lima Cleared of All Charges

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Facts

• Former Philippine senator and justice minister Leila de Lima has been acquitted of all criminal charges, concluding years-long legal battles for one of the fiercest critics of former Pres. Rodrigo Duterte and his drug war.¹
• This comes as a regional trial court in Muntinlupa ruled on Monday that the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove her guilty in a third and final count of conspiring to commit drug trading.²
• Additionally, a regional trial court in Quezon City dismissed two disobedience cases against de Lima for allegedly influencing her former bodyguard-driver to ignore a congressional subpoena during drug-related hearings.³
• De Lima had already been cleared of two counts of accepting bribes from convicted drug traffickers and was released on bail last November after spending six years detained at police headquarters in Manila.⁴
• She has long said that the charges, which could lead to life imprisonment, were made up in a bid to support the anti-narcotics campaign. On Monday, she pledged to help the International Criminal Court (ICC) in its probe into Duterte.⁵
• Last July, the Hague-based court rejected an appeal by the Philippines to block the investigation into the drug war that, according to police data, left more than 6K people dead from 2016 to 2022.⁶

Sources: ¹BBC News, ²Philstar.com, ³RAPPLER, ⁴New York Times, ⁵Al Jazeera and ⁶CNN.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by The Diplomat. Leila de Lima has at last been fully vindicated from nothing-but-bogus, politically-motivated charges for which she spent years in custody until late last year. Though it's great news that this miscarriage of justice is now over, an investigation into her arbitrary detention is needed to restore the credibility of the Philippine judicial system.
• Narrative B, as provided by The Manila Times. The acquittal of Leila de Lima on charges that put her behind bars doesn't mean that her supporters at home and abroad were right to insult the judiciary in the meantime. After all, it was she who previously argued that former Pres. Gloria Arroyo's continued detention was part of the independent judicial process and did not violate her human rights.

Predictions