PDEA seizes 2 kilos of shabu from BARMM police officer

COTABATO CITY — Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency 9 seized two kilos of shabu worth P13.6 million from a policeman in an entrapment operation in Barangay Sta. Maria in Zamboanga City on Saturday afternoon, May 16.

Local executives in Zamboanga City and police officials in Basilan, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, separately confirmed to reporters early Sunday the arrest of 45-year-old Police Staff Sgt. Nager Indal Abdulbasir, who is now in detention following the PDEA-9 operation.

PDEA 9 officials and local executives in Zamboanga City said Abdulnasir is a member of a unit in Basilan of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, whose senior officials at Camp SK Pendatun in Parang town in Maguindanao del Norte, assured the public on Sunday that they will process his dishonorable discharge for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. 

PDEA-9 Director Bryan Babang told reporters on Sunday morning that Abdulbasir was immediately frisked and handcuffed by agents and plainclothes police officer after turning over wo kilos of shabu during a buy-bust operation along a busy street in Barangay Sta. Maria on Saturday afternoon. 

Babang said the entrapment operation was carried out with the help of barangay and city officials and Brig. Gen. Edwin Quilates, director of the Police Regional Office 9.

Basilan Gov. Mujiv Hataman has urged his constituents in all 11 towns and two cities in the province to avoid maligning Abdulbasir's unit for his alleged wrongdoing.

"One wrong act of a policeman like him, done by him alone, a personal violation of a state law, is not an act of the unit where he belongs. Personally, I believe there are scalawags in every organization," Hataman, chairperson of the multi-sector Basilan Peace and Order Council, said.