4 shabu dealers linked to Mindanao terror groups arrested

COTABATO CITY — Plainclothes policemen arrested four drug peddlers, reportedly linked to two now-weakened local terror groups, in separate operations in Cotabato City over a span of two days. 

Ranking officials of intelligence units under the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region confirmed on Thursday, October 16, that all four suspects are in their list of shabu and marijuana traffickers sharing fractions of earnings to certain leaders of the outlawed Dawlah Islamiya and Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Central Mindanao.

 Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of PRO-BAR, told reporters on Thursday that the four suspects, who fell in three operations supervised by Col. Jibin Bongcayao, director of the Cotabato City Police Office, are now all detained, awaiting prosecution.

Local government officials said a 27-year-old resident of Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte, Abdulrasheed Ismael Ali, was arrested by operatives of the Cotabato City Police Precinct 2 after selling to them a heat-sealed sachet containing shabu along Gonzalo Javier Street in Barangay Rosary Heights 7 on Tuesday, October 14.

Another shabu peddler, the 30-year-old Tawis Banto Antong, was clamped down on the same day after combined agents of the Cotabato City Police Drug Enforcement Unit and the Cotabato City Police Precinct 1 had procured from him two sachets of shabu during a tradeoff along Almonte Street in Barangay Poblacion 5.

Senior members of the multi-sector Cotabato City Peace and Order Council, led by Mayor Bruce Matabalao, said two more shabu dealers, Moksim Dikay Madag, 45, and his 42-year-old accomplice, Maurillo Bulabon Villacarlos Jr., fell in an anti-narcotics sting on Wednesday, October 15, in Purok Pagkakaisa in Barangay Poblacion 2, enforced by personnel of the Cotabato City Police Precinct 3 and other PRO-BAR units 

Bongcayao and De Guzman told reporters separately that police seized three sachets of shabu from the duo during the entrapment operation, which was planned with the help of barangay officials.

“These are street level narcotics traffickers but what is good about these three entrapment operations is that these were all carried out with the direct support of city officials and barangay leaders,” De Guzman pointed out.

De Guzman said the administration of Cotabato City’s second-term mayor, Matabalao, has been instrumental in the entrapment of around 20 drug peddlers by PRO-BAR units in various barangays since he first took office in 2022. 

Local executives and Moro datus in towns across the adjoining provinces of Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte told reporters that the remaining leaders of the now virtually defunct Dawlah Islamiya and BIFF had allowed Ali, Antong, Madag, and Villacarlos to sell shabu in their remote enclaves in exchange for money.