'Floating' shabu lab found in Batanes

TUGUEGARAO, Cagayan - The regional police found a shabu laboratory in one of the cabins of a ferryboat they intercepted in Basco, Batanes last weekend.

The regional police, in a report to Philippine National Police chief Deputy Director General Panfilo Lacson, said the vessel, MV Queen Fatima, was docked in Basco when it was raided.

The raiding team found the shabu laboratory in one of the cabins where it confiscated chemicals and equipment used in manufacturing the illegal drug, known as methamphetamine hydrochloride.

Police arrested a certain Mr. Segundo, the second engineer of the boat.

Last week, Chief Superintendent Thompson Lantion, Cagayan Valley police director, said a former crewmember of MV Queen Fatima, a certain Roden Surban, was arrested in Basco and yielded 16 sachets of shabu and shabu paraphernalia.

In March last year, the regional police command dismantled a shabu laboratory in the Cagayan island-town of Calayan. Several drums of chloroform and raw materials and equipment used in manufacturing shabu were found in the laboratory.

Police said the clandestine laboratory was capable of producing at least 800 kilos of high-grade shabu a week.

Two Chinese nationals and a Filipino, Ernesto Piñera, tagged as the alleged operators of the shabu laboratory, are now being tried in a Manila court.

Lantion said drug syndicates resorted to the operation of shabu laboratories aboard vessels to elude police detection after the dismantling of the Calayan laboratory, said to be the biggest and well-equipped shabu laboratory in the country.

Raw materials being used in manufacturing shabu, according to Lantion, are believed to be coming from mainland China and smuggled into the country via Taiwan.