ALLEGED drug lord Kerwin Espinosa has recanted his sworn statements implicating Senator Leila de Lima in Illegal drug trade activities inside the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) during her term as secretary of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Espinosa made the retraction following the filing of drug trafficking charges against him by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) before the Department of Justice-National Prosecution Office (DOJ-NPS) in March 2021 after he was removed from the Witness Protection Program (WPP) for several infractions.
His recantation was contained in the four-page counteraffidavit he filed before the DOJ-NPS. He claimed that the complaint was anchored on the extrajudicial confession he executed on December 14, 2016 and the statements he gave during hearings conducted by the Senate Joint Committee on Public Order and Dangerous Drugs and the Committee on Justice and Human Rights inquiry and investigation on the killing of his father, Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr.
The respondent claimed that the NBI filed the case to pressure him to cooperate and affirm in various courts his testimony given during the Senate hearings.
However, he said, he has no intention of doing so since he was only “coerced, pressured and intimidated, and seriously threatened by the police.”
“He has no other option but to invent stories for fear of his life and of his family since his father, then [Albuera, Leyte) Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr., was killed on November 15, 2016 or just 18 days prior to the Senate hearing. Respondent was told to cooperate or else he and some members of his family will suffer the same fate as his father,” his counteraffidavit read.
With regard to De Lima, Espinosa has denied any dealings with her and claimed that he was only coerced to implicate her in the illegal drug trade activities inside the NBP.
“Finally, any and all his statements given during the Senate hearings, or in the form of sworn written affidavits, against Senator Leila de Lima are not true. He has no dealings with Sen. De Lima and has not given her any money at any given time. Any statement he made against the senator are false and was the result only of pressure, coercion, intimidation, and serious threats to his life and family members from the police who instructed him to implicate the senator into the illegal drug trade,” Espinosa said.
“For this, [the] undersigned apologizes to Senator De Lima,” he added.
The DOJ, however, belittled Espinosa’s recantation, saying that it would not have any bearing on De Lima’s prosecution for alleged involvement in the illegal drug trade, since he was not used as witness by the prosecution.
Prosecutor General Benedicto Malcontento said the NPS will release a briefer on Espinosa’s case soon.
Based on the complaint filed by the NBI, Espinosa together with several other respondents transacted several kilos of shabu through cellphone with several convicted drug lords running the illegal drug operations inside the NBI from 2011 to 2016.
Espinosa earlier claimed that De Lima, staunch critic of President Duterte’s anti-illegal drug war campaign, received protection money from operators of illegal drug trade inside the NBP, but the latter denied the charges against her and accused the administration of political persecution.
However, in his counteraffidavit, Espinosa said that since he has been removed from the WPP, the NBI can no longer use his alleged confession before the Senate or any written documents to prove his guilt and those of other people he may have implicated.
“The complainant must rely on the strength of its own evidence and not on the basis of Espinosa’s alleged admissions outside of Court which the complainant itself admitted…as his ‘extrajudicial confess,’” his counteraffidavit stated.
Earlier, the Regional Trial Court of Makati City dismissed the drug charges filed against Espinosa and several others for failure of the prosecution to produce sufficient evidence to overturn their presumption of innocence.
However, Espinosa is still facing trial for drug cases before the Manila RTC and in Albuera, Leyte.