Senator Risa Hontiveros on Monday, October 10 called on President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to finally set former Senator Leila de Lima free.
“Nasa kamay na ni Presidente (It’s now in the hands of the President), as I called on him, as many have called on the administration since yesterday: Sen. Leila should not even have been in that situation na pwede siyang targetin ng hostage-taker (where she could be targeted by a hostage-taker),” Hontiveros said in a televised interview on The Source.
“She should not have been in jail in the first place the past half decade,” Hontiveros stressed.
“So with greater urgency, I call upon the president to do the moral and the legal thing and to set her free,” the opposition senator said.
Hontiveros said almost all of the witnesses against De Lima in the drug cases that had been filed during the previous Duterte administration have recanted their testimony against her.
“So the case against her is lost and it was not even ever alive from the start. Pero talagang falling by the wayside, I really call on the President to free her,” Hontiveros reiterated.
Asked about the President’s offer to transfer De Lima to another detention facility, Hontiveros said it would be best for the Marcos administration to return the former lawmaker to freedom.
“As to the offer of the President, I really believe that she should be transferred not to another detention center, but returned to freedom, which has been her right, based on truth, based on justice these past six years,” she said.
“Imagine the dignity of Sen. Leila. After her harrowing experience to still tell chief PNP (Rodolfo Azurin Jr.) when he came to visit her also that she still feels safe where she had already earlier been taken hostage and had to be rescued,”
“The dignity of that person, hindi parin nawawala sa kanya ang pagiging former government official niya, former senator niya (her being a former government official, former senator is still intact),” she pointed out.
READ: https://mb.com.ph/2022/10/09/de-lima-declines-pbbm-offer-for-a-safer-jail-abalos/