Prosecutor hails bill seeking death for foreigners tied to drugs

By LITO RULONA
Correspondent

CITY Prosecutor Fidel Macauyag has expressed his support for a House bill that seeks stiffer penalties, including capital punishment, on foreigners who are found guilty of engaging in drugelated crimes in the country.

Macauyag said the proposal should be passed into law “as soon as possible” so that the country would not become a dumping ground of prohibited drugs.

House Bill 1213, filed by Rep. Rufus Rodriguez of the city’s 2nd District and his brother Maximo Jr. of the partylist Abante Mindanao, calls for a higher prescribed penalty, including death, of the national law of an alien found guilty of trafficking dangerous drugs and other similar substances.

The bill which seeks to amend RA 9165, otherwise known as the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, has already been approved unanimously by the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs chaired by Iligan Rep. Vicente Belmonte Jr..

Macauyag said foreigners who violate the country’s Dangerous Drugs Law must also be punished with death like Filipinos who were found to have violated similar laws in other countries.

“Our citizens were meted with a penalty of death in other countries. There is no reason why we cannot also impose the death penalty (on foreigners here),” he said.

However, Macauyag proposed that capital punishment should be imposed based on the quantity of illegal drugs seized from suspects.

Macauyag said that in the case of shabu, the qualifying quantity should be increased to 20 grams in order to impose the penalty of death. For Filipinos, the quantity must be higher.