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Napoles acquitted of serious illegal detention case

CA acquits Napoles of serious illegal detention case

Alleged pork barrel scam queen Janet Lim-Napoles was acquitted of the crime of serious illegal detention filed by Benhur Luy Monday.

The Court of Appeals said there is no sufficient evidence to support the accusation that she illegally detained Luy at Bahay ni San Jose, a retreat house in Makati.

The Court has considered the testimony of Monsignor Josefino Ramirez and Father Peter Edward Lavin who said he has even seen Luy “walking in front of the swimming pool” and “was quite happy because he was talking to someone in the cellphone”.

This is against the requirement that victims of serious illegal detention should have been deprived of his freedom and should have been seriously confined or restricted to go out.

The court added that Luy never tried to tell anyone about his case, even when he has called his family from time to time.

“The prosecution failed to satisfactorily explain the resistance of Benhur Luy to the rescue operation, which, to our mind negates the claim of serious illegal detention,” the CA said in a report from Inquirer.

Luy is the principal whistleblower in the pork barrel scam who claimed he was detained by Napoles to prevent him from exposing her alleged illegal transfering of lawmakers’ Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) into ghost projects for kickbacks. Napoles has since been sentenced to life imprisonment.

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