HOUSE Minority Leader Marcelino Libanan on Sunday called on the government to establish an international prisoner transfer program that would allow Filipinos convicted abroad to serve their jail terms in the Philippines.
Libanan asked the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Department of Justice (DoJ) and Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) to work on the details of the plan.
“We need a program that will facilitate the transfer of Filipinos convicted of crimes and incarcerated in other countries so that they can serve the remainder of their sentences here at home, closer to their families,” Libanan said.
“There’s no question that bringing Filipino offenders closer to their loved ones will be more conducive to their rehabilitation,” he said.
Libanan, a representative of the party-list 4Ps, said that in the United States, the international prisoner transfer program is administered by its Department of Justice’s International Prisoner Transfer Unit, while its Department of State, which is equivalent, is the chief negotiator for all prisoner transfer,
Last month, Mary Jane Veloso was repatriated to the Philippines from Indonesia, where she had been imprisoned for almost 15 years.
Veloso was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2010 in Indonesia but was granted a reprieve.
She is confined at the Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong City.
According to the DMW, 1,254 Filipinos have been convicted of various offenses abroad and are currently locked up in countries across the Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.
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