A Lebanese man suspected in the death of a Philippine maid whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in Kuwait has been arrested, Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said on Friday.
Cayetano said he has told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte about the arrest in Lebanon of Nader Essam Assaf, but added that Assaf’s Syrian wife, who is also a suspect in the death of Joanna Demafelis, remains at large.
The discovery of Demafelis’ body on Feb. 6 in the apartment in Kuwait City, where it had reportedly been kept for more than a year, sparked outrage and refocused attention on the tragic plight of poor Filipinas toiling mostly as maids abroad.
It prompted Duterte to ban the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait, where many abuses have been reported.
Assaf and his wife employed Demafelis. Duterte and other officials have asked Kuwaiti authorities to hunt for the couple.
“Assaf’s arrest is a critical first step in our quest for justice for Joanna and we are thankful to our friends in Kuwait and Lebanon for their assistance,” Cayetano said in a statement, adding that he expects Kuwait will seek Assaf’s extradition.
After attending Demafelis’ wake on Thursday in her hometown of Sara in the central Philippines, Duterte told reporters the ban on the deployment of Philippine workers to Kuwait would continue and could be expanded to other nations.
Demafelis’ body bore torture marks and signs that she was strangled, Duterte said, adding that the government is conducting an assessment to “find out the places where we deploy Filipinos and our countrymen suffer brutal treatment and human degradation.”
About one-tenth of the Philippine’s more than 100 million people work abroad. The workers have been called national heroes, because the income they send home sustains the nation’s economy, accounting for about 10 percent of its annual gross domestic product.
Philippine officials are under increasing pressure to do more to monitor the safety of the workers, who are mostly maids, construction workers and laborers.
Philippine Secretary of Labor and Employment Silvestre Bello III told a Senate hearing that he recalled three labor officers from Kuwait to be investigated over their failure to act on a request by Demafelis’ family for help after she went missing in January last year, he said.
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration official Hans Leo Cacdac reported that at least 196 Filipinos had died in Kuwait in the past two years, mostly for unspecified medical reasons, but also four from suicide.
Monitoring their well-being is difficult due to the sheer numbers of workers, but also by improper documentation — nearly 11,000 of the more than 252,000 Philippine workers in Kuwait are there illegally or are not properly authorized.
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