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Formal extradition request for Quiboloy 'forthcoming' — PH envoy
The formal request for the extradition to the United States of Filipino religious leader and alleged child sex offender Apollo Quiboloy is "forthcoming," Manila's top diplomat to Washington said Tuesday after the US conveyed the matter in preliminary talks with Philippine officials.
GMA News Online first broke the news last month based on interviews with senior Philippine government sources, who said the US has transmitted to the Philippine Department of Justice documents supporting Washington's request to extradite Quiboloy.
"There is already an existing request and the formal one will set the ball rolling through a formal note verbale by the US State Department to be sent to the Department of Foreign Affairs," Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez told reporters on the sidelines of a forum attended by foreign diplomats and analysts.
"It will come," Romualdez said, adding that he had been in close coordination with US officials on the matter.
"It has been relayed to me. They informed me that there is a forthcoming formal request because for years he has been in the most wanted list of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and now in the Interpol."
President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., he added, had also been notified of the extradition request for Quiboloy, a close ally and supporter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who was indicted by a US federal grand jury and has landed on the FBI's most wanted list.
The 75-year-old pastor is facing charges of committing conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, sex trafficking of children and bulk cash smuggling.
Duterte, who oversaw a deadly and brutal war on drugs, was arrested in Manila on March 11 this year on the basis of an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC). He is in a detention facility in The Netherlands while awaiting trial for charges of crimes against humanity.
US federal prosecutors said Quiboloy allegedly coerced women and underage girls into sex "under the threat of physical and verbal abuse and eternal damnation."
Romualdez said "it is assumed that the Philippine DOJ agreed already" on Quiboloy's extradition based on draft request sent by its counterparts from the US.
"We have a special relationship with the US so they have been coming back and forth with the draft to the DOJ," Romualdez said.
Quiboloy is currently detained in the Pasig City jail over local cases of alleged sexual and child abuse and human trafficking in the Philippines.
Romualdez said it will be up to the Philippine government if it will suspend its trial in the country so Quiboloy could first face charges in the US.
"It will be up to Secretary (Crispin) Remulla whether he will allow that," he said.
If the request for extradition is granted, "the authorities of the contracting parties shall agree on the time and place for the surrender of the person sought," according to the Philippines-US extradition treaty. — VDV, GMA Integrated News
