PDEA-BARMM agents seize P20.4-M worth shabu from barangay official

COTABATO CITY — Anti-narcotics agents seized P20.4 million worth of shabu from an incumbent barangay councilor entrapped in a residential area in Jolo, Sulu on Thursday, October 10.

The operation that resulted in the arrest and detention of the suspect, Kaiber Jailani Yusop, was laid together by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and units of the Sulu Provincial Police Office. 

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, told reporters on Friday that Yusop, a member of the barangay council in Lakit in Panamao, Sulu is now detained. He would be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Yusop was immediately frisked and cuffed by non-uniformed PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen after turning over to them three kilos of shabu in a tradeoff in Barangay Tulay in Jolo, the provincial capital of Sulu.

PDEA-BARMM agents had also confiscated the motorcycle of Yusop that he used in transporting shabu to contacts in far-flung areas in Sulu and his mobile phones bearing the numbers of his accomplices in the island province.

Castro said PDEA-BARMM is thankful to Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan, who is chairperson of the multi-sector Sulu Provincial Peace and Order Council, and the newly-installed regional director of PRO-BAR, Police Brig Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, for supporting the entrapment operation that resulted in the arrest of Yusop, long subject of the agency’s surveillance for his large-scale trafficking of shabu in the province.