PDEA personnel guarding tightly two detainees awaiting prosecution

COTABATO CITY --- The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency is guarding tightly two high-profile detainees from whom agents recovered P5 million worth of shabu in separate dragnets this week.Large-scale drug traffickers Raffy Osama, 22, and 47-year-old Mohammad Tuankali Macalimpas, an alleged member of the 105thBase Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, are now awaiting prosecution for possession of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu). They are both under heavy guard. These two are included in the list of our high-value targets. They fell in operations assisted by their vigilant friends and relatives, Juvenal Azurin, director of PDEA-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Friday.Osama was arrested on Wednesday in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao in a buy-bust laid by PDEA-ARMM agents.The team that carried out the operation recovered from him P2.5 million worth of shabu.Macalimpas was nabbed last Tuesday in nearby Pigcawayan town in North Cotabato while in the act of selling P2.5 million worth of shabu to PDEA-ARMM personnel disguised as drug dependents.Osama and Macalimpas have been charged with violation of Republic Act 9165, which prohibits possession and sale of illegal drugs.Azurin said Macalimpas shall also be prosecuted for possession of an unlicensed 9 millimeter pistol that agents recovered from him during his arrest last Tuesday. We are not taking chances. They are both being guarded well. Extensive security measures are in place considering that they were among our high-value targets. The long hand of law has reached them finally, Azurin said.