De Lima: Duterte regime can have 100 live witnesses but won’t change fact the charges against me are false and fictitious

By JOHN CARLO M. CAHINHINAN

The camp of detained opposition Senator Leila de Lima is currently studying the possible implications of the reported death of convicted drug lord Jaybee Niño Sebastian whose one of the supposed star witnesses in her pending drug case.

“My lawyers are still assessing the effect of Sebastian’s death on the cases against me, considering that he is or was the Duterte regime’s supposed ‘star’ witness,” De Lima said in a statement.

Sebastian reportedly died due to the dreaded COVID-19 disease and was cremated immediately in a private crematorium in Dasmariñas City, Cavite last Saturday, July 18.

Sebastian was one of those convicted high profile inmates of the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) who implicated de Lima in the alleged illegal drug trade inside the national penitentiary when the latter was still serving as secretary of the Department of Justice.

But de Lima stressed that all testimonies coming from the inmates and some other so-called witnesses against her are all fabrications anyway.

She insisted that whether the fabricator is dead or alive “does not change the fact that their stories are all lies, and that the cases against me are all fake.”

“The Duterte regime can have 100 live witnesses for all I care. But this still does not change the fact that the charges against me are absolutely false and fictitious. Conversely, the regime’s witnesses can all be dead, but this will not prevent Duterte and his operators from inventing other evidence to keep me in jail,” said de Lima.

De Lima further stressed that “under normal conditions, these cases would have been dismissed a long time ago,” adding that considering the state of the country’s justice system, she will not wonder “if dead witnesses can still be made to rise from the grave and made to testify.”

“Any judge worth his or her salt and who is still independent of Malacañang would readily see through all this machinated persecution of an opposition figure. He or she will not see the cases on the basis of mere technicality like the number of witnesses… Duterte holds them all by their throats,” she added.

Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)