Philippine VP Sara charged over Marcos assassination threat

She was hit with a ‘grave threats’ charge in an ongoing Senate impeachment trial over an alleged assassination plot against the president

The charge of “grave threats” was filed on Tuesday afternoon in a Quezon City courtroom, Department of Justice spokesman Polo Martinez said.

Lawyers for Duterte-Carpio on Tuesday argued the case could not be pursued while she was being impeached.

“As a sitting impeachable officer, the Vice-President may not be prosecuted for an alleged offence that is also the subject of an impeachment case,” defence lawyer Paul Lawrence Lim said in a statement.

Asked if the justice department believed the case could be pursued simultaneously alongside the impeachment trial, Martinez said: “That’s correct”, adding it was now in the court’s jurisdiction.

“That’s for the prosecutors in that ongoing trial to present,” he said, adding they had met a “high threshold” before moving forward with the case.

Professor Dante Gatmaytan, of the University of the Philippines College of Law, said there was nothing to prevent the cases from proceeding independently of each other.