Veloso pleads for freedom in letter to Chief Justice
Detained domestic worker Mary Jane Veloso personally appealed for her release in a handwritten letter addressed to Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo that her parents submitted to the Supreme Court on Friday.
Joined by Veloso’s supporters from the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), her parents Celia and Cesar submitted her two-page letter, together with a motion urging the high court to act on a habeas corpus petition that NUPL filed for Veloso in November last year.
Veloso’s parents wrote their own letter to Gesmundo which they also attached to the motion.
Veloso, 41, spent 14 years on death row in Indonesia after she was caught in possession of drugs in April 2010 and sentenced in October that year. She claimed she was unaware of the drugs found in the luggage given to her by her recruiters Julius Lacanilao and Maria Kristina Sergio.
Veloso was scheduled to be executed on April 29, 2015, but was granted a last-minute reprieve at around 1 a.m. after Philippine authorities informed Indonesia that her recruiters had surrendered to police. Then President Benigno Aquino III had also repeatedly sought clemency for Veloso.
Repatriated, detained
In 2020, a Nueva Ecija court convicted Lacanilao and Sergio of large-scale illegal recruitment.
Three years later, President Marcos—visiting Indonesia during its chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit—asked President Joko Widodo to “reexamine” Veloso’s case, which ultimately led to her repatriation on Dec. 18, 2024.
Veloso has since remained under detention at the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City, while Sergio, who used to be detained at CIW, was transferred to the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm in Palawan province in January 2025.
Veloso’s family and activist groups have since repeatedly reached out to Mr. Marcos to appeal for her release. Last February, she sent the President a letter just like her letter now to the Chief Justice.
“This coming Mother’s Day on May 10 will mark the 17th time I will be away from my two children. For that long, they have been without a mother to guide and care for them,” Veloso said in her letter.
“For some reason, after one year, I am still here in prison even though I have not committed any wrongdoing, even in our country,” Veloso said. “I firmly believe there is no legal basis for my continued detention, especially under the sentence of reclusion perpetua. I have learned that this is the judgment stated in my prison record here at the CIW.”
‘Lack of jurisdiction’
In their letter to Gesmundo, Veloso’s parents said “We hope to be with her while there is still time because [we are] also getting old.”
“Mary Jane also has children who are eager to also be with her,” they added.
Veloso’s lawyers argued in the motion that her repatriation in 2024 was an “opaque, undisclosed diplomatic arrangement” between Indonesia and the Philippines—which, they added, was not bound to continue enforcing her sentence by Jakarta in her home country.
They said Veloso was a trafficking victim under the Palermo Protocol, a 2000 United Nations treaty on human trafficking which the Philippines adopted in 2002.
They argued that their habeas corpus petition emphasizes the Philippine government’s “lack [of] jurisdiction and domestic legal authority” to enforce Veloso’s detention since she is neither charged nor convicted under Philippine laws.
They also cited “the human impact of prolonged detention…to underscore the irreparable nature of continued restraint pending resolution of the petition.”
According to NUPL chair Edre Olalia, Veloso will soon appear before a Mandaluyong court to testify against Lacanilao and Sergio on the remaining charges of estafa and human trafficking. —WITH A REPORT FROM INQUIRER RESEARCH
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