Manila: Leila De Lima, a former senator and one of the most vocal opponents of former President Rodrigo Duterte, was cleared on Friday by a Philippine court of a criminal charge related to claims that she accepted money from drug dealers while serving as a cabinet minister.
De Lima, 63, has spent the last six years in jail, and despite being found not guilty, she won't be released right away because there is still an active court case against her.
In 2017, just a few months after she began a senate investigation into Duterte's "war on drugs," which saw thousands of users and dealers killed, many of them by police or in mysterious circumstances, De Lima was charged. She was widely regarded as a political prisoner by human rights organisations.
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Thank you, thank you, and keep praying, De Lima said in a live commentary as she left the courtroom.
"I'm still requesting more prayers for a different case. Wonderful day, wonderful day, the beginning of my justification, she exclaimed. During televised speeches, an enraged Duterte had repeatedly accused her of being involved in the drug trade, which De Lima dismissed as personal animus.
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De Lima, a former justice minister and recipient of numerous human rights honours, has claimed that the accusations were false and intended to silence her.
A court dismissed one of the three drug cases brought against De Lima in 2021 as a result of Duterte's accusations, which resulted in numerous online lynching campaigns. As her attorney, Filibon Tacardon, read from a statement De Lima, he remarked, "I have no doubt from very beginning I will be acquitted. He claimed that when De Lima learned of the verdict, she sobbed.