Demands for the immediate release of jailed Philippine senator Leila de Lima is mounting, following the retraction of two major witnesses accusing Sen. De Lima of involvement in the illegal drug trade. Philippine human rights alliance Karapatan called on 3 May for the immediate release of Sen. De Lima, describing her arrest and continued detention as a “case of political persecution and repression.”

On 28 April 2022, self-confessed drug lord Roland Espinosa issued an affidavit declaring that he lied when he testified in Congress in 2016 that he gave PhP 8 million to Sen. De Lima to finance her senate bid. On 30 April, former Bureau of Corrections official Rafael Ragos issued a separate affidavit retracting his claims that he delivered PhP 5 million to Sen. De Lima’s driver in 2012 at the behest of drug convicts in the New Bilibid prison. Both witnesses claim that officials of the Philippine National Police and Department of Justice coerced them into making the false accusations.

Karapatan called for an independent investigation into the allegations of coercion and the various officials’ roles “in the filing of malicious charges” against the senator.

Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, said, “Senator de Lima has suffered five years in detention for an alleged crime that key witnesses now dispute… The authorities should immediately drop the politically motivated charges and release her, and impartially investigate the witnesses’ claims that they were coerced to give false testimony.”

Meanwhile, six US senators led by Sen. Marco Rubio and Ed Markey issued a joint statement on 3 May calling for Sen. De Lima’s immediate release, adding that any remaining charges should be dropped without further delay.

US Senators Dick Durbin, Marsha Blackburn, Chris Coons and Patrick Leahy joined the statement. They said, “Clearly, the bogus charges against her were, as we suspected all along, politically-motivated and based on false information… That she has lost five years in jail due to these spurious charges is a travesty.”

The European Parliament has been calling for the immediate release of Sen. De Lima as early as September 2020.

Sen. De Lima has been a fierce opponent of President Rodrigo Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ under which more than 30,000 have reportedly been killed by police agents and vigilantes since June 2016. She was also leading investigations into Duterte’s involvement in ‘death squad’ killings in Davao City when he was the long-time mayor of that city.

In its 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the US State Department said it found reports on human rights abuses committed by Philippine security forces, including extrajudicial killings and torture as “credible.” The report alleges that the incarceration of De Lima is politically motivated.