A Filipina, who
worked in Dubai as a housemaid in 2009, and was convicted of drug trafficking in
Indonesia, has had her execution by firing squad delayed at the last minute
after one of her recruiters surrendered to police in the Philippines, the
attorney general’s spokesman in Jakarta said on Wednesday.
“The
execution of Mary Jane (Veloso) has been postponed because there was a request
from the Philippine president related to a perpetrator suspected of human
trafficking who surrendered herself in the Philippines,” said Tony
Spontana, spokesman for the attorney general.
“Mary Jane
has been asked to testify.”
Thirty-year-old
Veloso, the mother of two children from the Philippines, travelled to Dubai in
2009 in order to work as a housemaid in order to raise money to help provide
for her poor family.
She left the
emirate after ten months to escape an abusive employer, said Erde Olalia, a
member of Veloso’s volunteer legal team, told Reuters.
She returned to
the Philippines unemployed. There, a recruiter told her about a work
opportunity in Malaysia, but when Veloso flew there she found there was no job
to walk into.
According to an
official record of the court ruling seen by Reuters, the recruiter asked Veloso
– while she was waiting for the job in Malaysia to materialise – to fly to
Yogyakarta to hand over a suitcase to a man called “Jhon”. She bought
her a round-trip ticket and said she would pay for her accommodation.
And so, on
April 25, 2010, Veloso landed at Yogyakarta airport, where authorities
discovered packages of heroin wrapped in foil hidden inside her luggage.
The court
record said Veloso’s plea that she did not know heroin was in the suitcase was
baseless because she admitted to having seen black tape covering slits in the
lining of the bag when she was packing her clothes.
” … the
accused ignored this and continued to fill the bag with clothes. Moreover, the
accused could not prove the truth of her unawareness in court, so the accused’s
denial cannot legally be used as a reason to free her of criminal
responsibility.”
The ruling said
that, therefore, her guilt was proven – and her denial of guilt was an
aggravating factor.
Veloso’s lawyer
said she did not see anything suspicious in the luggage and didn’t think
anything of the tape.
Lawyers
appealed Veloso’s case all the way to the Supreme Court on the grounds that,
because there was no translation into her own language, Tagalog, she was not
fully aware of the court proceedings. All of her appeals were denied.
While fighting
Veloso’s battles in Indonesia, her lawyers also filed a human trafficking
complaint against the woman they said was the recruiter, Sergio.
In a surprising
turn of events less than 24 hours before the executions were due to take place,
Maria Cristina Sergio, the Veloso’s recruiter, went to police in the
Philippines, seeking protection after receiving death threat calls and text
messages.
Police said
there was no criminal case yet against Sergio.
In a
Philippines radio interview on Wednesday, Sergio said she had accompanied
Veloso to Malaysia, given her some money and shared a hotel room with her
there. She denied that she was a recruiter or that she had given Veloso the
suitcase.
She recalled
that one day Veloso called her from Kuala Lumpur airport to say she was flying
to Indonesia. Sergio said the phone connection was then cut but, before it was,
Veloso implored her to take care of her family.
“I stand
by what I said that I have no knowledge of the bag … and know nothing of
drugs, not even a trace,” she said.
Philippine
President Benigno Aquino leapt on the developments at home to make a final
appeal on Tuesday for Veloso to be spared, arguing that she could be a vital
witness in prosecuting human and drugs syndicates plaguing the region.
With just a few
hours left before the executions, his plea appeared to have been rebuffed,
which was why her reprieve came as such a surprise.
“This
solution is really saying let’s pursue this because maybe there’s something
better we can do in really addressing the issue of drugs in Indonesia, drugs in
the Philippines and even in drugs in the country where the suitcase of Mary
Jane came from,” said Almendras.
President Joko
Widodo, whose steadfastness on executions as part of a war on drugs has strong
public support, told reporters he spared Veloso because of the bigger
trafficking case, but he left little doubt that she would eventually be
executed.
“This is
not a cancellation but a postponement,” he said.
* with Reuters
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