P3.4-M worth shabu seized in Cotabato City bust

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents seized P3.4 million worth of shabu from five alleged dealers entrapped on Saturday afternoon along a busy street here.

The suspects, Usman Camit Musa, Al-Raji Mlok Bayam, Kennedy Manampen Baraguir, Bailing Saavedra Bagundang and Sahara Saavedra Bagundang, are now locked in a detention facility here of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Christian Frivaldo, director of PDEA-BARMM, said on Friday that the five suspects did not resist arrest when they learned that they had traded their illegal merchandise to non-uniformed agency personnel and policemen.

“This is a big haul, made possible with the help of vigilant people, among them officials of the Bangsamoro government and Moro religious leaders. To them PDEA is thankful,” Frivaldo said.

Frivaldo said so daring were the five suspects that they agreed to sell half a kilo of shabu, costing P3.4 million, to PDEA-BARMM agents disguised as drug dependents, along a stretch of the Sinsuat Avenue, a busy thoroughfare straddling through the center of this city.

Frivaldo said they are to prosecute the five suspects for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002 using the P3.4 million worth shabu confiscated from them as evidence.