Former convict and self-confessed drug user Rolan “Kerwin” Espinosa accused Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa of forcing him to implicate former Senator Leila de Lima in the illegal drug trade, which led to her six-year detention.
Espinosa made the revelation during the eighth inquiry of the House quad committee on Friday into the Duterte administration’s bloody drug war, which killed over 7,000 people — mostly from poor communities — according to government data.
Aside from De Lima, Espinosa said Dela Rosa ordered him to implicate Cebu-based businessman Peter Lim, his alleged shabu supplier.
“He told me to admit involvement in the drug trade and to implicate Peter Lim and Leila de Lima to pin them down,” Espinosa told the lawmakers, speaking in Filipino.
Dela Rosa was the first police chief of the Duterte administration, which was in power from 2016 to 2022.
The ex-convict added that De la Rosa threatened him with a fate similar to what happened to his father, former Albuera, Leyte Mayor Rolando Espinosa, who was shot dead in his jail cell in November 2016 amid allegations of involvement in narcotics.
The father and son were both in Duterte’s narco-list.
Kerwin became emotional as he recalled how police intimidated him and prohibited him from attending his father’s funeral. At the time, he was detained in Camp Crame following his extradition from Abu Dhabi for allegedly running the largest drug operation in Eastern Visayas.
In a series of Senate hearings in 2016, Kerwin implicated De Lima in the illicit drug trade inside the National Bilibid Prison in Muntinlupa City during her stint as justice secretary under the administration of the late President Benigno Aquino III.
De Lima, a staunch critic of the Davao Death Squad (DDS) allegedly formed by Duterte during his tenure as Davao mayor, was detained in 2017.
The opposition senator deemed the cases lodged against her as payback for spearheading the probe into the DDS when she was chair of the Commission on Human Rights.
In June this year, she was acquitted of the last drug charge filed against her.
Later in the hearing, Espinosa offered his sincere apology to De Lima.
“Forgive me for being taken for a ride, for being gullible at the time, for implicating you in something that was not true. Sorry, ma’am. I am ready to face whatever it is you have planned for me,” Espinosa said.
Espinosa has been out of jail since 2023, when the Regional Trial Court in Baybay City dismissed a case against him due to lack of evidence. He plans to run for mayor in his hometown of Albuera, Leyte, in the 2025 polls.