‘I don’t talk to criminals’–Rody

MANILA - PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte said Friday that he is not inclined to meet with high-profile inmate Jaybee Sebastian, who is seeking to talk only to him to reveal the personalities involved in the illegal drug trade at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City.

"I do not talk to criminals. He can go to a fiscal if he wants. Or maybe write a letter to [Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto] Yasay if that is his [proposal]," the President said early Friday in an interview in Davao City airport following his return to the country from Vietnam.

Sebastian's counsel Eduardo Arriba earlier said Sebastian would only disclose everything he knows about the alleged drug trade inside the national penitentiary in a one-on-one meeting with the President.

Arriba had said Sebas-

tian does not want to divulge the information publicly as it may draw the ire of public officials in the previous and current administrations, thus posing a threat to his security.

Sebastian was among the inmates injured in a stabbing incident at the NBP on Wednesday morning. Drug convict Tony was killed.

Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said Sebastian was not keen to testify at the House probe in the drug proliferation inside the Bilibid and was only willing to talk about the alleged food anomaly inside the national penitentiary.

But Aguirre clarified that the administration had no hands in the scuffle that involved Sebastian and stressed that it wanted him "alive" since he was among the key personalities that could reveal the real situation inside the penitentiary.

Duterte said he had already warned all individuals involved in drugs to "be careful of what [they] wish for" as they would get what they rightly deserve.

"What? He has a problem now?... I tell you, you ask for it. Been telling everybody, that drugs, you ask for it in your life. I said, be careful of what you wish for or what you want," Duterte said.

"Wallow in several, at the expense of your human fellow beings [but] it will come, as always – the comeuppance and the law of karma," he added. SUNNEX

CHRISTIAN MARK LIM. A BIG NO. With emphasis, President Rodrigo R. Duterte says during a press conference at the Davao International Airport at 2 a.m. yesterday that he does not talk to criminals, pertaining to Jaybee Sebastian's request to talk to him personally on the...