P3.6-M worth shabu seized in Marawi City, Sulu PDEA operations

COTABATO CITY — State agents seized P3.6 million worth of shabu from six alleged dealers who fell in separate entrapment operations in Marawi City and in Sulu province, both in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, on Thursday.

Christian Frivaldo, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-BARMM, told reporters on Friday that their agents arrested Minsuary Abinal and Ansary Gulman after selling to them P3.4 million worth shabu in a tradeoff on Thursday afternoon near the Abdullah Hospital in Marawi City, the capital of Lanao del Sur.

The duo, entrapped with the help of personnel of different units under the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, are now clamped down in a PDEA-BARMM detention facility, to be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

The sting that resulted in the arrest of Abinal and Gulman, both Maranaws, was preceded by the earlier confiscation of close to P200,000 worth of shabu from four Tausug men, Al Naber Jadjuli, Utal Abdulla, Apalal Padjiri and Rashier Bakil, entrapped by PDEA-BARMM agents in Barangay Latih in Patikul town in Sulu with the help of the Patikul Municipal Police Station and the Sulu Provincial Police Office.

Frivaldo said the suspects, now detained, voluntarily surrendered when they sensed that they had sold shabu to non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen disguised as drug dependents.