MARY Jane Veloso is finally free. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s absolute pardon, granted just last week, allowed her to leave prison after nearly 16 years of incarceration. Her reunion with her family is an ending the public once feared she would never see.
However, the case began with 2.6 kilograms of heroin found in her suitcase at an Indonesian airport. But the question remains: What happened to the people who arranged for that suitcase to travel with her — the ones who are the real perpetrators in this case?
Veloso has always maintained that she did not know the suitcase she carried — the one allegedly given to her by her recruiter — actually contained drugs estimated to be worth a staggering $500,000. Yet an Indonesian court convicted her of trafficking and sentenced her to death. She escaped execution in 2015, returned to the Philippines in 2024, and testified this June in the Philippine cases against her alleged recruiters. And while the absolute pardon she received releases her from punishment, it does not itself decide those cases, overturn the Indonesian finding, or establish who truly put the heroin in her luggage in the first place.
This is where a police story becomes a test of our approach to illegal drugs.
A routine airport inspection found the contraband inside the luggage, so its courier was arrested. To an officer counting seizures, the system worked. The drugs were found. The suspect was caught. Case closed.
But a seizure tells us only what was found, not necessarily who planned the shipment, who knew about it, or who was used to carry it out. Those are questions for investigation and proof.
Drug enforcement rests partly on deterrence: People must believe they will be caught and punished if they offend. Indonesia’s penalties supplied no shortage of severity — in this case, capital punishment — particularly for drug trafficking offenses involving large quantities. Yet if Veloso’s account is established, the prospect of execution could not have deterred her from knowingly carrying heroin simply because she did not know it was there. Instead, it was the organizers who could weigh the risk; thus, they had reason to put it on somebody else’s shoulders rather than carrying it themselves.
The lesson for drug agencies is straightforward. If the courier is the only person certain to be caught, punishment may be severe without being an effective deterrent to the people running the trade. In this case, arresting the carrier must begin the inquiry, not conclude it. They are, after all, merely a cog in a bigger machinery.
Investigators should establish who offered the job, bought the ticket, supplied the luggage, gave the travel instructions, and most importantly, expected to collect the shipment. They should preserve messages, payments, travel records and the physical evidence while memories and digital trails are still accessible. A claim of deception must be tested carefully, not accepted or brushed aside automatically simply because drugs were found in someone’s possession. Recognizing a possible trafficking victim can also reveal a witness who can lead investigators to the ugly network working beyond the airport.
This grueling work cannot belong to a single agency, nor a single country. Drug enforcers, trafficking investigators, prosecutors, migration officials and consular officers need to share information quickly and lawfully. When the journey crosses borders, their counterparts abroad must also be engaged early.
Veloso’s years-long wait to testify against her alleged recruiters shows the cost of letting the criminal case in one country and the trafficking case in another proceed on separate clocks. Justice becomes harder when borders divide the evidence, the victims and the investigators.
There is a human cost as well. Her two sons grew up while she was imprisoned. A presidential signature could open the prison gate but it could not, unfortunately, restore all the years lost between them. Reintegration assistance matters, but so does protecting future domestic workers before they even leave the country: credible information about recruiters, accessible ways to report suspicious offers, and prompt help from the government when one is arrested overseas.
We should welcome the pardon without treating it as a substitute for the rest of the investigation. The accused recruiters deserve a fair trial, and Veloso’s allegations deserve a thorough hearing.
Drug agencies should examine the case together, identify what evidence was missed or delayed, and ask whether their measures of success reward the capture of replaceable couriers while leaving the organizers in business, ready to recruit others.
For a nation with families scattered across the world, the answer has consequences far beyond one suitcase. Mary Jane Veloso is free.
The question now is whether the people who used her have anything to fear — or whether they can simply go looking for another Mary Jane among the millions of Filipinos who leave home seeking a better life.
