Protected drug rings operate in Lanao del Sur

MARAWI CITY, Philippines - The August 14 rape-slay of a Maranaw girl who was burned after having been molested was just one about a hundred gruesome incidents here involving drug addicts in the past eight years.

Sources from the religious community, among them employees of the state-run Mindanao State University (MSU) here, said the city is now one of Mindanao’s major transshipment areas for methamphetamine hydrochloride, most known as shabu.

Circulating stories suggest that more than P100 million worth of shabu is being circulated here and in nearby Lanao del Sur towns monthly by big drug rings, who are enjoying protection from local officials.

Jabbar Macacua, Elias Pimping, Salman Udag and Jalil Sani, who all admitted their involvement in the brutal gang rape and murder of the Maranaw girl following their arrest, are known drug dependents.

One of them is a relative of a notorious henchman of an influential local official, who was implicated in various criminal offenses.

The person was even charged by the military at the central office of the Department of Justice (DOJ) for having masterminded the ambush in the city over a year ago of soldiers in retaliation for the death of a relative, a certain Gamal, who was killed in a military-police anti-narcotics operation.

An MSU professor was earlier killed and burned in a daring attack in the city by a group identified with one of the drug syndicates here.

Army intelligence sources said the killers of the professor and the four men who raped and killed a Maranaw girl last August 14 belong to the same band of criminals being coddled by the local official.

“Among the four rapists is a cousin of the person who was earlier charged at the DOJ for the ambush of soldiers in Marawi City,” said one of the sources.

“Shabu is being sold here like ordinary vegetables,” said a source from the local police.

A cleric, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, said there are even drug dealers selling shabu within the immediate peripheries of mosques in the city and nearby towns.

“The city government of Marawi is not doing anything to stop the problem,” said one of the preachers, who shared information on condition of anonymity.