Elusive drug lord nabbed in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — Authorities arrested on Friday an elusive drug trafficker who had slipped through a dozen entrapments laid to put him behind bars.

Juvenal Azurin, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Saturday the 38-year-old Alimudin Baliwan, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was cornered by PDEA-ARMM agents in his hideout in Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

Azurin said Baliwan yielded peacefully when he sensed that PDEA-ARMM agents, backed by personnel of the Maguindanao provincial police and the Army’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion had cordoned his lair and that there was no more way out.

“He voluntarily had himself cuffed when he was shown a warrant for his arrest issued by a competent court,” Azurin said on Saturday morning.

Baliwan is long wanted for shabu trafficking cases that are pending in local courts.

The latest warrant for his arrest was issued by Judge Bansawan Ibrahim of the Regional Trial Court Branch 13 in Cotabato City.

Azurin said Baliwan is among PDEA-ARMM’s top 20 targets in Maguindanao province.

“He is a high-value target of PDEA-ARMM,” he said.

Agents recovered from him shabu and a fragmentation grenade.

Azurin said Baliwan shall be prosecuted separately for possession of a fragmentation grenade.