MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Monday advised Mary Jane Veloso, a former overseas Filipino worker sentenced to death in Indonesia on drug charges, to directly communicate with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. regarding her appeal for clemency.
Veloso’s open letter to Marcos dated January 28 was released by Migrante International and circulated online over the weekend where she asked to be set free so she could be with her family she had been separated from “for more than 16 years.”
“It would be better if this open letter of hers would be delivered directly to the president so that the right decision can be made about this,” Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary Claire Castro said in Filipino in a Palace briefing.
Veloso said she is seeking clemency so she could take care of her parents and children.
She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in October 2010 for drug trafficking.
She was granted a reprieve amid a string of appeals from the Philippine government during the term of former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.
Veloso was repatriated to the country in December 2024 and has since been detained in the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City.
Marcos previously said “it would take a long time” before it could be determined whether or not freeing Veloso is “appropriate.”
Filipina inmate on death row in Indonesia Mary Jane Veloso waves to journalists at the Yogyakarta Class IIB Women’s Correctional Institution in Wonosari, Yogyakarta, on December 15, 2024. AFP PHOTO
