A video featuring high profile inmate Herbert Colanggo performing a song for Senator Leila De Lima with his fellow witnesses has gone viral.
In it, Colanggo and three other detainees who testified against De Lima in the ongoing congressional hearing on the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa are doing an acapella of a song supposedly dedicated to the former justice secretary.
According to the OFW in ISRAEL Foundation Facebook page, the video was given to them by Atty. Ferdinand Topacio, who can be heard laughing several times while filming and listening to the song. Topacio is the legal counsel for witnesses Noel Martinez, German Agojo, Joel Capones, and Jerry Pepino, and co-counsel for Colanggo.
Colanggo was the one who testified that De Lima received millions as "payola" from drug lords at the national penitentiary when she was still the secretary of the Department of Justice.
In a four-page affidavit, the robbery convict revealed that the Carcel Side, a coalition of prison gang members from Visayas and Mindanao which he leads, had given De Lima P3 million monthly. Allegedly, the amount was a bribe to De Lima for special privileges accorded to them and the continuance of the drug trade inside the NBP.
Colanggo also confessed that he was allowed to sell beer inside the Bilibid during special occasions, earning P3 million per 300 boxes in every event as each can was sold for more than 10 times the original price. De Lima, he claimed, had a P1 million share in that business venture.
It appears that Topacio released the video to prove that his clients were not "blackmailed, threatened, intimidated and/or tortured" to testify against De Lima, as what the Senator claimed during her privilege speech last Tuesday.
De Lima called on the Commission on Human Rights and the Senate to investigate what she calls "psychological torture" of detainees who were forced to give false testimony.
In a statement earlier, Topacio said:
"My clients have neither been threatened, cajoled, tortured nor intimidated, nor have they been subjected to torture, either physical or psychological. Also, her ridiculous claims that my clients have been plucked from the National Bilibid Prison to undergo interrogation at the ISAFP Facility in Camp Aguinaldo is the stuff of which fantasies are made."
In it, Colanggo and three other detainees who testified against De Lima in the ongoing congressional hearing on the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa are doing an acapella of a song supposedly dedicated to the former justice secretary.
According to the OFW in ISRAEL Foundation Facebook page, the video was given to them by Atty. Ferdinand Topacio, who can be heard laughing several times while filming and listening to the song. Topacio is the legal counsel for witnesses Noel Martinez, German Agojo, Joel Capones, and Jerry Pepino, and co-counsel for Colanggo.
Colanggo was the one who testified that De Lima received millions as "payola" from drug lords at the national penitentiary when she was still the secretary of the Department of Justice.
In a four-page affidavit, the robbery convict revealed that the Carcel Side, a coalition of prison gang members from Visayas and Mindanao which he leads, had given De Lima P3 million monthly. Allegedly, the amount was a bribe to De Lima for special privileges accorded to them and the continuance of the drug trade inside the NBP.
Colanggo also confessed that he was allowed to sell beer inside the Bilibid during special occasions, earning P3 million per 300 boxes in every event as each can was sold for more than 10 times the original price. De Lima, he claimed, had a P1 million share in that business venture.
It appears that Topacio released the video to prove that his clients were not "blackmailed, threatened, intimidated and/or tortured" to testify against De Lima, as what the Senator claimed during her privilege speech last Tuesday.
De Lima called on the Commission on Human Rights and the Senate to investigate what she calls "psychological torture" of detainees who were forced to give false testimony.
In a statement earlier, Topacio said:
"My clients have neither been threatened, cajoled, tortured nor intimidated, nor have they been subjected to torture, either physical or psychological. Also, her ridiculous claims that my clients have been plucked from the National Bilibid Prison to undergo interrogation at the ISAFP Facility in Camp Aguinaldo is the stuff of which fantasies are made."