COTABATO CITY —Plainclothes policemen seized P170,000 worth of shabu from two traffickers reportedly linked to local terror groups during an entrapment operation in Barangay Brar, Datu Anggal Midtimbang, Maguindanao del Sur, on Sunday evening, December 15.
Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Monday that the duo, Patrick Bitol and Rakim Dumamba, are now detained, awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Macapaz said Bitol and Dumamba were immediately arrested by personnel of the municipal police in Datu Odin Sinsuat, led by Lt. Col. Samuel Roy Subsuban, after selling shabu in a tradeoff in Barangay Brar in Datu Anggal Midtimbang in Maguindanao del Sur.
Barangay Brar is located at the border of Datu Odin Sinsuat in Maguindanao del Norte province and Datu Anggal Midtimbang.
Local officials and relatives of Bitol and Dumamba told reporters on Monday, December 16, that they both shared fractions of their earnings with leaders of the Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in exchange for their open peddling of shabu in secluded areas where members of both groups are holding out.
Macapaz said he is thankful to local officials and relatives of the duo, two of them Islamic preachers, for helping Subsuban and his counterparts in the Datu Anggal Municipal Police Station plot the sting that resulted in their arrest and confiscation from them of P170,000 worth of shabu.