(Eagle News)—–Senator Leila De Lima on Saturday, Aug. 18, slammed the arrest of three lawyers who police said intimidated them and obstructed justice during a raid at a Makati bar on Thursday, Aug. 16.
In a statement, De Lima, who is detained on drug charges in Camp Crame, said that the arrest of Leni Rocel Rocha, Jan Vincent Sambrano, and Romulo Bernard Alarkon, who she said were only “defending their client from a PNP raiding team,” meant the police had declared lawyers in general as “combatants.”
“Lawyers are now fair game as targets of the drug war. That IBP [Integrated Bar of the Philippines] card is no longer protection from police abuse,” she said.
According to De Lima, the police were “responding in the only manner that they know since they were unleashed like dogs by their master in Malacañang two years ago.”
“Maybe it is only ironic that the mastermind of this breakdown in the rule of law, where even lawyers are no longer safe, is a lawyer himself,” she said, referring to President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Tokhang is no longer for the poor and defenseless alone… Everyone is now equal, not before the law, but in the breakdown of the rule of law and Duterte’s reign of impunity,” she added.
On Friday, the three lawyers were ordered released by the Makati Prosecutors Office pending further investigation into the constructive possession of illegal drug charges filed against them by the police.
Apart from these charges, the police filed charges for obstruction of justice, for resistance and disobedience, and for violation of the ordinance banning the crossing of a police line against the three lawyers, who they said committed the crimes after barging in the Time in Manila bar while authorities were conducting a search of the premises.
Earlier, a raid in the bar yielded ecstasy tablets, drug paraphernalia, among others.
