Three drug den operators busted

COTABATO CITY — Anti-narcotics agents seized P102,000 worth of shabu from three drug den operators, who have reported links to a local terror group, in an entrapment operation in Barangay Poblacion 2 in Cotabato City on Monday.

Gil Cesario P. Castro, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said on Tuesday that their agents immediately arrested the three drug den operators after selling to them P102,000 worth of shabu in a tradeoff.

Mr. Castro said the entrapment operation was carried out with the help of different units under Brig. Gen. Prexy D. Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.

Relatives of the now detained suspects, who requested anonymity, told reporters that all three of them had peddled shabu discreetly in far-flung areas where there is presence of the now moribund Dawlah Islamiya.

The allies Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, tagged in deadly bombings in Central Mindanao in recent years, are led by violent religious extremists involved in trafficking of shabu and propagation of marijuana. — John Felix M. Unson