P6.8-M worth of shabu seized in Marawi anti-narc operation

COTABATO CITY — Anti-narcotics agents seized P6.8 million worth of shabu from three dealers entrapped in Barangay Cabingan in Marawi City on Wednesday morning.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, on Tuesday said that the suspects, Allandoni Alaweya Mendalano, Sanny Sangkad Kaadeadatu and their female accomplice, Isnaima Arimao Sapia, are now detained. They will be prosecuted for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

They did not resist when plainclothes PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen from units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region cuffed them after selling a kilo of shabu, worth P6.8 million, to buyers disguised as drug dependents in a secluded area in Barangay Cabingan.

Castro and Police Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, director of PRO-BAR, separately confirmed to reporters that the entrapment operation that led to the arrest of Mendalano, Kaadeadatu and Sapia was laid with the help of Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr. and Marawi City Mayor Majul Gandamra.

Tanggawohn said PRO-BAR is grateful to both officials and their constituent Islamic religious leaders for helping push the government’s anti-narcotics campaign in Lanao del Sur forward.

The PDEA-BARMM, units of PRO-BAR in Lanao del Sur and in its capital, Marawi City and local executives had seized more than P100 million worth of shabu from dealers, among them members of the Dawlah Islamiya, in joint entrapment operations in the past 24 months.