De Lima alarmed over death of high-profile inmates linked to her drug case

Detained Senator Leila de Lima on Tuesday expressed concern over the “beleaguering trend of deaths” involving convicted drug lords who were presented as government witnesses in the drug charges against her.

The lawmaker issued the statement following the death of high-profile convicted drug lord Vicente Sy due to cardiac arrest last week.

"Ano na naman ito!? Meron na naman namatay (o pinatay?) na high-profile inmate sa Bilibid. At cardiac arrest naman daw ang dahilan," she said in her Dispatch from Crame No. 1111.

De Lima said it’s not “remote” that some, if not all, of the prosecution witnesses who were either "coerced, threatened, bribed or blackmailed to lie" about her alleged involvement in the drug trade would be “targeted for extermination” to permanently silence them from exposing the truth about the drug cases.

"This beleaguering trend of witnesses dying still does not give comfort to me who is waiting for their eventual revelation on who are behind these fabricated charges filed against me," she said.

The detained lawmaker noted that Sy was the second high-profile convict who testified against the senator to have died amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first was Jaybee Sebastian, who De Lima said, was killed deliberately “in order to block his then impending retraction of his affidavit falsely implicating me in the Bilibid drug trade.”

De Lima further noted that Sy was one of the four inmates who were stabbed in a “staged prison riot in 2016 to coerce them into falsely testifying” against her.

One of the four inmates, Tony Co, died in the said incident.

The detained lawmaker also recalled that Sy “bluntly admitted” during the cross-examination and re-direct examination, that he had no personal knowledge of the drug-related accusations against her.

She said Sy was "emphatic" in his testimony that he did not know her and that he never gave her money.

"At this point, after almost four years and a half under unjust detention, I have no ill will against Vicente Sy and, as a human being, I commiserate with his bereaved family. At least, he didn't lie about not knowing me and not giving me money. His sin against me, if any, pales in comparison to the sin of those who used him and his fellow inmates to bring down an innocent woman and public servant," she said.

"As they say, dead men tell no tales. And it appears that my persecutors are sticking to the malevolent wisdom of this saying. As if the truth can be eternally buried or is not inevitable. As if there's no day of reckoning,” she added.

De Lima then warned of the possibility that another witness might suffer the same fate as Sy’s.

“Pag nagpagamit ka sa masama, baka mapatay ka ng masamang gumamit sa iyo. Sino kaya ang isusunod nila?" she asked.—LDF, GMA News