A Philippine court on Friday acquitted of a drugs charge one of the fiercest critics of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte's "war on drugs", a move welcomed by activists who called her incarceration a vindictive effort to harass and silence her.
The court cleared former senator Leila de Lima, 63, of the second of three criminal charges against her, which stemmed from allegations made publicly by Duterte that as a justice minister in an earlier administration, she took payments from drug gangs in prisons.
