Drug dealer fall in Buluan PDEA entrapment operation 

MAGUINDANAO --- A cohort of the two drug traffickers killed by government agents last week in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao fell in an entrapment operation in a nearby town Monday.

Jamerushien Espadera was arrested after selling P34,000 worth of shabu to a non-uniformed agent of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the town center of Buluan, Maguindanao.

Espadera’s arrest was preceded by the deaths on Thursday of his accomplices, Sindatuk Pendaliday and Nurhamin Pendaliday, in a brief gunfight in Barangay Malala, Datu Paglas with combined personnel of PDEA-BARMM, the Army’s 40^th Infantry Battalion and the Maguindanao provincial police.

The slain Sindatuk and Nurhamin were drug couriers of the long wanted large-scale drug dealer Abdullah Pendaliday, alias “Commander Grasscutter,” also implicated in more than a dozen other heinous offenses, including multiple murder, robbery and propagation of marijuana.

Azurin said the sting that led to the arrest of Espadera was laid with the help of the Army’s 40^th Infantry Battalion and the Buluan municipal police office.

Relatives have confirmed that Espadera peddled shabu for Commander Grasscutter, the target of Thursday’s PDEA operation in Barangay Malala that left two of his men dead.

Commander Grasscutter managed to escape while Sindatuk and Nurhamin, who were his relatives by blood, traded shots with PDEA-BARMM agents and soldiers who tried to arrest them.

Azurin said they will continue to search for Commander Grasscutter with the help of Army and police units in Maguindanao province.

The elusive Commander Grasscutter, who has links with the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, thrice eluded entrapments laid in the past four years by units of the Army’s 601^st Brigade under the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division and personnel of the Maguindanao provincial police.