Baguio's most wanted drug dealer nabbed after 3 decades

BAGUIO CITY -  After three decades, Baguio’s most wanted drug dealer, Arthur Nider, 52, fell in a sting operation by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA)-Cordillera on Monday dawn here.

Wanted for being the most valued target of anti-narcotics agents, Nider, who allegedly heads the Nider Drug Group who has engaged mostly his brothers, sisters and relatives into the illicit drug trade, was caught ina dragnet in Irisan barangay past 2 a.m. on Monday.

Once arrested in 2006 but whose case did not prosper, Nider will surely be pinned this time, said PDEA-Cordillera Spokesperson Eily Fama, because a good case build up was undertaken including airtight evidence that will certainly lock him in jail for the rest of his life.

Nider, the PDEA said, has been into the drug trade for more than thirty years and in fact more notorious than the Oliveros group whose leader, 56-year old Bernardo Oliveros alias “Bernie," was nabbed September last year here.

Nider was caught selling two sachets of shabu to PDEA agents when other anti-narcotics agents closed in to arrest him.

Closely connected with the jail group Bahala Na Gang, Nider’s kin was recently sentenced to a life term while two of his kin again were busted several months ago and are undergoing trial. One reportedly died lately of shabu overdose, Fama said, adding that still, another one of his member is now a paralytic due to alleged abuse of drugs.

With the arrest of the syndicate’s top boss comes the “neutralization” of the Nider Group,  Fama said, stressing the very important effort of the PDEA in running after “high value targets” in the anti-drug operations in the Cordillera region.