Six Arrested, Drug Den Closed in Cotabato City Entrapment

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Anti-narcotics agents arrested six shabu and marijuana traffickers and closed down their drug den in this city in an entrapment operation assisted by their close relatives and local officials on Sunday, July 26. City officials told reporters on Monday that Salik Talib Tuan, Said Sandigan Lagasan, Musa Tuan Talib and Ebrahim Talib Tuan and two male adolescents, names withheld by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for being minors, are now in the custody of the PDEA-BARMM. The PDEA-BARMM, the Cotabato City social welfare office and the Ministry of Social Services and Development-BARMM are jointly watching over the two detained minors. The five suspects and their known leader, Tuan, were entrapped right in their drug den in Barangay Mother Poblacion in Cotabato City, where they facilitated pot sessions for buyers of shabu and marijuana from residential areas around. Edgar Jubay, regional director of PDEA-BARMM, said the six suspects were immediately arrested by their agents and operatives from the Cotabato City Police Office and the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office after procuring shabu from them in plastic sachets in the premises of their drug den in Mother Barangay Poblacion on Sunday morning. They yielded peacefully when they sensed that they had sold shabu to law-enforcement agents, according to local executives who helped plot the operation. Jubay said the entrapment operation, assisted by Cotabato City’s police director, Col. Jibin Bongcayao and Mayor Bruce Matabalao, was premised on reports by tipsters, among them close relatives of the six suspects, about their illegal activities. PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen had seized from them during the operation P170,000 worth of shabu, mobile phones and a Toyota Vios car, with license plates NEA 2448, that they reportedly used in transporting shabu and marijuana to contacts in Cotabato City and in barangays in nearby Sultan Kudarat and Datu Odin Sinsuat towns in Maguindanao del Norte. Under state law, operation of a drug den is a non-bailable offense.