Court convicts Mary Jane Veloso's recruiters in another case

A Nueva Ecija court has convicted the alleged traffickers of Filipina death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso of large-scale illegal recruitment in a separate case involving three other women.

Judge Anarica Castillo-Reyes sentenced Maria Cristina Sergio and Julius Lacanilao to life imprisonment and ordered them to pay a fine of P2 million, according to the ruling promulgated Thursday.

This case involves private complainants Lorna Valino, Ana Marie Gonzales, and Jenalyn Paraiso, said private prosecutor Edre Olalia.

Though Gonzales filed an affidavit of desistance due to "life's hardships" and a lack of time to attend court hearings, the court still took into account her assertion that Sergio and Lacanilao had proposed overseas employment to her.

The case involving Veloso, who remains imprisoned in Indonesia, is pending. The Supreme Court (SC) last year allowed her to testify through deposition but she has yet to give her testimony as Sergio and Lacanilao appeal the SC decision.

"While legally separate and distinct, this bolsters our case that Mary Jane is herself a victim," Olalia said. "Only difference is that unlike the three other victims, she actually proceeded and left for abroad and met her misfortune."

In its ruling, the Nueva Ecija court said the prosecution showed enough evidence. Citing jurisprudence, it found the couple's denial that they are in the recruitment business "an inherently weak defense" when taken against the positive testimonies of the prosecution's witnesses.

"All told, the Prosecution having sufficiently mustered sufficient evidence to secure a guilty verdict, the Court is left with no other recourse save to render a judgment of conviction," the ruling states.

Olalia, who is the president of the National Union of Peoples' Lawyers, welcomed the decision in favor of Veloso's fellow victims.

"We look forward to the full achievement of justice when the other case of Mary Jane is resolved and she herself is ultimately and finally sent home free in time," he said in a statement.

"We all owe it to millions of our fellow citizens who meet misfortune at the hands of unscrupulous people who take advantage of their vulnerabilities."

Malacañang welcomed the court’s decision.

“OK 'yun kasi na-convict ang mga transgressors of law,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo told reporters on Thursday.

Panelo, however, said the conviction will have no implication on Veloso’s case in Indonesia.

“As a lawyer, there is no connection. She’s been charged with a crime there [in Indonesia], nothing to do with the conviction [here],” he said.

Veloso was sentenced to execution after she was convicted of drug trafficking for being caught with 2.6 kilograms of heroin in her luggage at Yogyakarta airport in 2010. The Filipina said she was tricked by her recruiters into smuggling illegal drugs into Indonesia.

She was spared from execution in 2015 after Sergio, one of her alleged recruiters, surrendered. Then-President Benigno Aquino III had proposed to the Indonesian government that Veloso be turned into a witness in the local case against her alleged traffickers. — with Virgil Lopez/KBK/BM, GMA News