Shabu dealers linked to NPA, Dawlah nabbed
Peace and Order • 17:00 PM Fri Mar 24, 2023
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By:
John M. Unson
The four suspects entrapped in Koronadal City are now detained. (From PDEA 12)
COTABATO CITY - Authorities seized 434,800 worth of shabu from eight dealers, linked to the New People’s Army and the Dawlah Islamiya, in separate operations in three provinces in three days.
The first to fall were Fernan Herrera, Wendel Tiamsing, Gerard Arabia, and Ronnie Bermejo, arrested after selling P78,800 worth of shabu to non-uniformed agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 12 in Barangay San Jose in Koronadal City, capital of South Cotabato province.
Three other shabu traffickers, Gerald Miano, Gilbert Ecunas and Argie Macalua, were entrapped 24 hours later in another PDEA 12 operation in Barangay Poblacion in Alabel town in Sarangani.
Miano, Ecunas and Macacalua, whom sources from the Police Regional Office 12 and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said remitted fractions of their earnings to an NPA group in Sarangani, were immediately frisked and cuffed after turning over P40, 800 worth of shabu to PDEA 12 agents disguised as drug dependents.
Aileen Lovitos, director of PDEA 12, said Friday all seven suspects had been charged with violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.
Lovitos said their separate entrapment operations in Koronadal City and in Alabel that led to the arrest of the suspects were assisted by the National Bureau of Investigation and units of PRO-12.
A police team nabbed an alleged member of the Dawlah Islamiya named Abdullah Manguda in a P320,000 worth shabu sting Thursday night in Pigcawayan town in Cotabato province.
Manguda, an ethnic Maguindanaon from the troubled Talitay town in Maguindanao del Sur, peacefully yielded when he noticed he was dealing with plainclothes policemen in a tradeoff in Barangay Poblacion 3 in Pigcawayan.
Police Brig. Gen. Jimili Macaraeg, director of PRO-12, said Friday Manguda, who is identified with the Dawlah Islamiya, is now in the custody of the Pigcawayan Municipal Police Station.
Macaraeg said investigators are still trying to identify his contacts in the municipality where he peddled shabu from his hometown, Talitay, where there is presence of local terrorist groups fashioned from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.