Dealer killed, P13.6-M worth shabu seized in Sulu raid

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents seized P13.6 million worth shabu from a peddler who was killed in a shootout he provoked when he sensed he was to be arrested after a tradeoff in Luuk, Sulu on Saturday.

The suspect, Pailan Sahali Jumali, was declared dead on arrival by physicians at a hospital where agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and personnel of units under the Sulu Provincial Police Office brought him for treatment.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, told reporters here on Sunday that a bystander, Julpuri Wadih Sailabbi, was wounded in the crossfire.

PDEA-BARMM agents who carried out the entrapment operation are now in custody of the shabu, weighing two kilos and costing P13.6 million, that the uncooperative Jumali had sold to them at a secluded area in Barangay Tanduh Batu in Luuk, one of the 18 towns in Sulu.

Castro said the entrapment operation that led to the seizure of shabu from the slain Jumali was laid with the help of Sulu Gov. Hadji Abdusakur Mahail Tan, different units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the military’s Western Mindanao Command.

"To those who helped us plot and implement this operation, we are grateful," Castro said.

He said their agents and intelligence operatives of the Sulu PPO are together trying to identify the accomplices of the Jumali in his shabu peddling activities in Luuk and nearby towns for them to be prosecuted in absentia.