The highest-profile critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war was arrested Friday on charges she said were meant to silence her, but she vowed to keep fighting the “sociopathic serial killer”.
Speaking to journalists minutes before armed police in flak jackets detained her, Senator Leila de Lima insisted she was innocent of the drug trafficking charges that could see her jailed for life.
“It is my honor to be imprisoned for the things I am fighting for. Please pray for me,” De Lima, 57, said outside her Senate office where she had sought temporary refuge overnight after an arrest warrant was issued Thursday.
“They will not be able to silence me and stop me from fighting for the truth and justice and against the daily killings and repression by the Duterte regime.”
De Lima also recorded a polemical video just before her arrest as she called for ordinary Filipinos to show courage and oppose Duterte’s drug war, which has seen more than 6,500 people killed since he took office eight months ago.
“There is no doubt that our president is a murderer and a sociopathic serial killer,” she said in the 10-minute video that was posted on her Facebook page.
De Lima, a former human rights commissioner, also said her arrest was an act of revenge for her decade-long efforts to expose Duterte as the leader of death squads during his time as mayor of southern Davao city.
Duterte first raised allegations in August that De Lima had been running a drug trafficking ring with criminals inside the nation’s biggest prison when she was the justice secretary in the previous government.
Source: AFP
