MANILA: 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 on 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.
“I will have to destroy her in public,” Duterte said then as he began a campaign to tarnish her reputation, including by making unsubstantiated allegations about her sex life.
“De Lima is not only screwing her driver, she is also screwing the nation.”
De Lima was last week charged with three counts of drug trafficking.
'Prisoner of conscience'
She and her supporters insisted that Duterte orchestrated the charges not just to crush her opposition, but also to intimidate anyone else who may want to speak out against the president or his drug war.
“People are afraid,” the Rev. Robert Reyes, an activist priest who spent the night at the Senate with De Lima and other supporters, told AFP after her arrest.
“If the government can arrest a powerful person like her, what more the little man? That is the implied message of her arrest.”
Vice President Leni Robredo, a member of De Lima’s opposition Liberal Party and elected separately from Duterte, described the arrest as “political harassment.”
Amnesty International said Thursday that it would regard De Lima as a prisoner of conscience.
“The arrest of De Lima is a blatant attempt by the Philippine government to silence criticism of President Duterte and divert attention away from serious human rights violations in the ‘war on drugs’,” it said.
Duterte’s aides insisted they had a strong case against De Lima and said her arrest showed even the most powerful people would be brought to justice if they broke the law.
“The war on illegal drugs targets all who are involved and the arrest of an incumbent senator demonstrates the president’s strong resolve to fight pushers, peddlers and their protectors,” presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said.
Duterte, 71, won the presidential election last year after promising during the campaign to eradicate drugs in society by killing tens of thousands of people.
He launched the crackdown immediately after taking office in June and police have reported killing 2,555 drug suspects since then, with about 4,000 other people murdered in unexplained circumstances.
Amnesty has warned that police actions in the drug war may amount to crimes against humanity.
Duterte has variously denied and acknowledged his role in death squads in Davao. As president he has repeatedly urged police to kill drug addicts as well as traffickers.
But Duterte’s aides insist he has never broken any laws.
Top Philippine drug war critic arrested, but defiant
Top Philippine drug war critic arrested, but defiant
Bondi Beach shooting suspect conducted firearms training with his father, Australian police say
MELBOURNE, Australia: A man accused of killing 15 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach conducted firearms training in an area of New South Wales state outside of Sydney with his father, according to Australian police documents released on Monday.
The documents, made public following Naveed Akram’s video court appearance from a Sydney hospital where he has been treated for an abdominal injury, said the two men recorded footage justifying the meticulously planned attack.
Officers wounded Akram at the scene of the Dec. 14 shooting and killed his father, 50-year-old Sajid Akram.
The state government confirmed Naveed Akram was transferred Monday from a hospital to a prison. Authorities identified neither facility.
The 24-year-old and his father began their attack by throwing four improvised explosive devices toward a crowd celebrating an annual Jewish event at Bondi Beach, but the devices failed to explode, the documents said.
Police described the devices as three aluminum pipe bombs and a tennis ball bomb containing an explosive, gunpowder and steel ball bearings. None detonated, but police described them as “viable” IEDs.
The pair had rented a room in the Sydney suburb of Campsie for three weeks before they left at 2:16 a.m. on the day of the attack. CCTV recorded them carrying what police allege were two shotguns, a rifle, five IEDs and two homemade Daesh group flags wrapped in blankets.
Police also released images of the gunmen shooting from a footbridge, providing them with an elevated vantage point and the protection of waist-high concrete walls.
The largest IED was found after the gunbattle near the footbridge in the trunk of the son’s car, which had been left draped with the flags.
Authorities have charged Akram with 59 offenses, including 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of causing harm with intent to murder in relation to the wounded survivors and one count of committing a terrorist act.
The antisemitic attack at the start of the eight-day Hanukkah celebration was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state in 1996.
The New South Wales government introduced draft laws to Parliament on Monday that Premier Chris Minns said would become the toughest in Australia.
The new restrictions would include making Australian citizenship a condition of qualifying for a firearms license. That would have excluded Sajid Akram, who was an Indian citizen with a permanent resident visa.
Sajid Akram also legally owned six rifles and shotguns. A new legal limit for recreational shooters would be a maximum of four guns.
Police said a video found on Naveed Akram’s phone shows him with his father expressing “their political and religious views and appear to summarise their justification for the Bondi terrorist attack.”
The men are seen in the video “condemning the acts of Zionists” while they also “adhere to a religiously motivated ideology linked to Islamic State,” police said, using another term for the Daesh Group.
Video shot in October shows them “firing shotguns and moving in a tactical manner” on grassland surrounded by trees, police said.
“There is evidence that the Accused and his father meticulously planned this terrorist attack for many months,” police allege.
An impromptu memorial that grew near the Bondi Pavilion after the massacre, as thousands of mourners brought flowers and heartfelt cards, was removed Monday as the beachfront returned to more normal activity. The Sydney Jewish Museum will preserve part of the memorial.
Victims’ funerals continued Monday with French national Dan Elkayam’s service held in the nearby suburb of Woollahra, at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish life. The 27-year-old moved from Paris to Sydney a year ago.
The health department said 12 people wounded in the attack remained in hospitals on Monday.
