Cops seize P2-M worth shabu in Cotabato City operation

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Non-uniformed policemen seized P2 million worth of shabu from four male peddlers entrapped in Barangay Rosary Heights 5 in this city on Sunday, April 13.

The suspects, Abdul Mohaimen Mastura Guiaber, Nurjel Osmeña Datumanong, Arman Akmad Macmod and his son, who is a minor, were immediately detained by plainclothes policemen, led by Lt. Col. Esmael Madin, after selling to them P2 million worth of shabu during a tradeoff in Barangay Rosary Heights 5 in uptown Cotabato City.

Madin is the municipal police chief of Sultan Kudarat in Maguindanao del Norte, whose local officials helped plan the sting that resulted in the arrest of the four suspects.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Juan Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters that the entrapment operation was first by laid by Madin and his subordinate-policemen in Barangay Simuay in nearby Sultan Kudarat, but was done in Barangay Rosary Heights 5 in Cotabato City instead after the suspects requested to meet them there.

Macapaz said Madin and Cotabato City’s police director, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, cooperated in overseeing the operation, planned with the help of confidential informants aware of the large-scale peddling of shabu by the suspects in different barangays in Cotabato City and in towns around.

One of the four detained suspects, an adolescent, shall be turned over to the Cotabato City Social Welfare Office, according to Macapaz.