Defense asks why no chemical supplier is in shabu lab case

One of the lawyers of the 14 defendants in the shabu laboratory case yesterday questioned the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency on why no case has been filed so far against the alleged suppliers of chemicals to the supposedly illegal operation.

Lawyer Vicente Fernandez II wondered that, while the case has been going on in court already, no alleged supplier of chemicals was ever indicted.

There is no shabu without the chemical suppliers, Fernandez said as he searched for reasons from Sr/Supt. Lina Sarmiento, the prosecution witness in yesterday's hearing of the case.

"How come the source was not implicated? After all, PDEA instigated all of this. Without the chemicals, there is no shabu," Fernandez grilled Sarmiento at the witness stand.

Sarmiento, PDEA's director for plans and operation services, responded that it was not that the agency will not file charges against the chemical suppliers.

She clarified that PDEA's compliant service has been conducting further investigation as yet and the development report from the matter has yet to be submitted to her office.

However, Sarmiento named Morteza Tamadoni as the action agent in the drug operation and the one who allegedly purchased the chemicals needed for shabu manufacturing and delivered these to Simon Lao, one of the defendants.

Chief Inspector Madzgani Muksam Mukaram, another prosecution witness, earlier testified that Tamadoni purchased 95 pails of acetone from a drugstore in Cebu City and several chemicals from other places. Acetone is one of the ingredients used in shabu manufacturing.

Eleven people, mostly foreigners, were arrested during a raid of a warehouse in Umapad, Mandaue City on September 2004 that turned out to be a shabu laboratory, deemed as the largest ever found in southeast Asia.

Seized in the raid were 675 kilos of shabu worth P1.5 billion and enough chemicals to produce 15 tons more of the banned substance.

Alleged financier Calvin Tan was also arrested later on and indicted along with warehouse owners Richard Ong and Andy Ng. This reached the total number of people implicated in the case to 14, but none from the alleged suppliers yet. - Mitchelle P. Calipayan