“WE are bothered by our conscience. We do not want you to be victims of mistrial. We will reveal in due time. We are assuring you all that the last case will be dismissed.”
Thus, said one of the two prosecution witnesses in a letter to the camp of former senator Leila de Lima asking for forgiveness and saying they plan to formally retract all their allegations that she was involved in the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prisons in Muntinlupa City.
In a letter to De Lima and former corrections chief Franklin Bucayu, Rodolfo Magleo and Nonilo Arile, both inmates at a penal farm in Occidental Mindoro, expressed their intent to recant their testimonies in the last pending drug case against the former justice secretary.
Magleo and Arile wrote in the letter, a copy of which was furnished by De Lima’s camp to reporters.
They said their “primordial objective” was “to help you both to be set free together with your fellow co-accused in the last case at the sala of Hon. Judge Gito of Muntinlupa City RTC Br. 206.”
De Lima has been detained at Camp Crame in Quezon City since February 2017 over charges she received bribes from drug lords at Bilibid when she headed the Department of Justice.
Magleo was scheduled to testify during De Lima’s trial on Monday. After he gave his letter to De Lima, the prosecution opted not to present him as a witness, according to a published report on abogado. com
According to Magleo and Arile’s letter, five more prosecution witnesses plan to recant their allegations against De Lima.
