The Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court (RTC) has been asked to either dismiss the drug case or grant bail in favor of detained former Senator Leila De Lima.
The former lawmaker made the appeal in an omnibus motion dated Feb. 23 filed before Muntinlupa City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 204 now that prosecution witness, former Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) officer-in-charge Rafael Ragos recanted his testimony against her.
The motion was filed after Ragos appeared again before the court last Feb. 10, this time, as witness of her co-accused, Ronnie Dayan.
“Ragos’s retraction of his court testimony not only disproves that money supposedly delivered to accused De Lima came from the illegal drug trade, it also disproves that any money, from whatever source, was delivered at all,” she stated through her motion.
With this, she pointed out “ the dismissal of the instant case or, in the interim or alternative, the grant of bail is most warranted in the paramount interest of justice.”
De Lima is facing before RTC Branch 204 one of two remaining drug charges concerning her alleged involvement in the narcotics trade at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).
“As can be gleaned from the direct examination and cross-examination of Ragos on the witness stand, his testimony retracting his earlier statements on the supposed delivery of 10 million pesos to herein Accused is consistent, clear, and categorical,” she said.
“No room for doubt is left as to the fabricated and manufactured nature of his earlier testimony for the Prosecution regarding the said delivery. Said delivery is nothing but a fictitious and imagined story invented and created for Ragos upon the dictate of his then superior, former DOJ Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II,” she stated.
“According to Ragos in his affidavit of retraction and as reiterated on the witness stand before the Honorable Court, he was forced and coerced by Aguirre into implicating accused De Lima and co-accused Dayan into supposedly receiving a total of 10 million pesos that was allegedly sent to his BuCor quarters by New Bilibid Prison (NBP) inmate Hans Tan,” she added.
