Mary Jane Veloso still barred from testifying vs recruiters


By NICOLE-ANNE C. LAGRIMAS, GMA News
Mary Jane Veloso remains prohibited from testifying against her alleged traffickers as her lawyers near their potential last chance to show evidence against the couple who allegedly tricked her into smuggling drugs into Indonesia in 2010.
The Nueva Ecija Regional Trial Court set the last hearing for the prosecution to present its evidence for Thursday, September 26, said the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers' Edre Olalia, the private prosecutor and Veloso family lawyer.
A death row inmate in Yogyakarta, Veloso is the "key witness" in the human trafficking and illegal recruitment case against Maria Cristina Sergio and Julius Lacanilao.
The trial court judge allowed her to testify from her prison cell and scheduled the taking of her deposition for April 2017, but was blocked by the Court of Appeals later that year, prompting state lawyers to elevate the case to the Supreme Court.
The petition remains pending before the Third Division days before the last hearing for the prosecution, Olalia said. The Veloso family tried to intervene, but they were rejected for lack of legal interest last March.
"Just let her speak instead of gagging her on the way to the gallows," Olalia said, directing it to the lawyers of Sergio and Lacanilao, whom he said filed motions that compelled the Nueva Ecija court to give the prosecution the "last setting" on Thursday.
If the SC would not rule on the pending petition before Thursday, he said the prosecution may present another witness or ask for more time to present Veloso's testimony "in the greater interest of justice."
Veloso was caught with 2.6 kilograms of heroin in her luggage at a Yogyakarta airport in 2010. She was investigated and then convicted for drug trafficking in Indonesia and sentenced to execution by firing squad.
But she was spared from execution in 2015, after Sergio, her alleged recruiter, surrendered to authorities. Then-President Benigno Aquino III had proposed to the Indonesian government that Veloso be turned into a witness. —LDF, GMA News

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