P7.2-M worth of shabu seized in two Mindanao police operations

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Policemen confiscated P7.2 million worth of shabu from three dealers, one of them a government employee and the other a suspected member of a local terrorist group, in entrapment operations in Butuan City in Region 13 and in Lanao del Sur in the Bangsamoro region on Monday.

The first to fall in the two police operations is a dealer initially identified only as Ameer, whom local officials said has links with the Dawlah Islamiya, who yielded P476,000 worth of shabu in a clandestine tradeoff with non-uniformed policemen in Barangay Dilimbayan in Maguing, Lanao del Sur.

Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Tuesday that the suspect, whose full name he withheld, meantime, while efforts to locate his accomplices are underway, was entrapped by personnel of the Maguing municipal police and the Lanao del Sur Provincial Police Office after receiving tips from local officials about his large-scale trafficking of shabu in the province.

“The suspect is now detained. Our personnel in Lanao del Sur will build an airtight case against this detained drug dealer,” Nobleza said.

About eight hours later, policemen from units of the Region 13 police arrested two shabu dealers, Junry Simplicio Montilla and Ronnie Nano Simplicio, in another entrapment operation in Barangay Bancasi in Butuan City that resulted in the confiscation from them of P6.8 million worth of shabu.

Radio reports here and in nearby cities on Tuesday morning had quoted barangay leaders in Bancasi and officials of the Butuan City Police Office as saying that Montilla is a collector aide in the Office of the City Economic Enterprise in the city’s local government unit.

Region 13 police director Brig Gen. Kirby John Kraft said on Tuesday that the duo is now locked in a detention facility of the Butuan CPO, to be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Kraft said Montilla and Simplicio were immediately frisked and cuffed after selling to plainclothes anti-narcotics operatives more than a kilo of shabu, worth P6.8 million.

“We are grateful to the very vigilant private individuals who helped us plot the entrapment operation that resulted in the arrest of these two shabu dealers,” Kraft said.

The successful police anti-narcotics operations in Lanao del Sur and in Butuan City were assisted by agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, Nobleza and Kraft separately confirmed to reporters via mobile phone.