Shabu dealer linked to terror groups busted by Bangsamoro cops

COTABATO CITY — A trafficker who reportedly shared earnings to two terror groups landed in jail after selling P680,000 worth of shabu to plainclothes policemen in an entrapment operation in Barangay Limbo in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte on Wednesday afternoon, October 2.

Relatives of the now detained 34-year-old Muslimin Kuwis Kadil told reporters that he has contacts in both the Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters to whom he shared fractions of his earnings to enable him to move freely in secluded areas where there is presence both groups. 

Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Thursday morning that Kadil fell in entrapment on Wednesday in Barangay Limbo, laid by personnel of the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station led by its chief, Lt. Col Esmal Madin.

Tanggawohn said non-uniformed subordinates of Madin immediately frisked and cuffed Kadil after selling to them P680,000 worth of shabu in a clandestine tradeoff in a residential area in Barangay Limbo, laid with the help of tipsters who reported  to the municipal police his large-scale drug trafficking activities in Sultan Kudarat and in nearby barangays in Cotabato City.

Units of PRO-BAR in Maguindanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte had clamped down, in a series of anti-narcotics stings in the past 24 months, 19 drug dealers linked to the outlawed allies Dawlah Islamiya and the BIFF.

Both terror groups now have few remaining members after more than 700 had surrendered since 2022 to units of PRO-BAR and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division via local reconciliation programs that local executives in the two provinces are actively helping push forward.