Court frees Arroyo after 5 years in detention
Print Edition
THE Philippine Supreme Court yesterday dismissed a plunder case against former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and ordered her freed immediately after nearly five years of hospital detention — a decision the grateful ex-leader indicated can help her deal with those who “through self-serving interpretation and implementation of the law” made her suffer.
The 15 justices voted 11-4 to grant Arroyo’s plea seeking to dismiss the case before the special anti-graft Sandiganbayan court because of insufficient evidence, Supreme Court spokesman Theodore Te said. It involved the alleged misuse of 366 million pesos (US$7.8 million) from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.
Arroyo thanked the court “for finally stopping the persecution I had unjustly gone through the last five years” and President Rodrigo Duterte “for allowing due process to take its course.”
She released a statement from the hospital, with the serving of the court’s order for immediate release delayed by paperwork. “It is my fervent hope that nobody else will suffer the persecution that had been levied on me through self-serving interpretation and implementation of the law,” she said.
Arroyo was detained under former president Benigno Aquino III, who accused her of corruption and misrule. Aquino’s successor, Duterte, however, has said the plunder case against her was weak.
Aquino has not commented on the court decision. But his former justice secretary and now Senator Leila de Lima said the Supreme Court seems to have assumed a role as a “trier of facts” in the case, supplanting the anti-graft court’s assessment when it declared there was insufficient evidence of guilt. “It’s disappointing,” she said. “Why did they have to wait for the change in administration to issue that ruling?”
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