Relatives helped clamp down elusive Cotabato City drug dealer

COTABATO CITY - It was his neighbors and close relatives who helped put him behind bars.A notorious trafficker - Mhads Luminog Mamintal - circulating no less than P10 million worth of shabu weekly to retailers on the streets fell Thursday in an entrapment laid with the help of relatives.Juvenal Azurin, director of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Friday it was people close to the now detained Mamintal, among them his relatives by blood, who gave him away.Mamintal, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was arrested in the act of selling P6.8 million worth of shabu to a PDEA-ARMM agent in disguise in a tradeoff at a busy sidewalk in the city.Azurin said the operation was carried out with the help of the Cotabato City police office, Mayor Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi and intelligence agents from the Army’s 5thSpecial Forces Battalion.Guiani-Sayadi is presiding chairperson of the inter-agency, multi-sectoral Cotabato City peace and order council.Barangay officials have confirmed to reporters that Mamintal circulated weekly no less than P10 million worth of shabu, or methamphetamine hydrochloride, to peddlers on the streets.It took the PDEA-ARMM them more than a month of surveillance on Mamintal’s mode of dispersing shabu here and in barangays in nearby Sultan Kudarat and Datu Odin Sinsuat towns, both in Maguindanao, before agents proceeded with the sting that resulted in his arrest. We are thankful to his relatives and to the office of the city mayor of Cotabato for supporting our effort to put him behind bars, Azurin said.Mamintal is now clamped down in the detention facility of PDEA-ARMM at Pedro Colina Hill in the city.Azurin said Mamintal shall be prosecuted for violation of Republic Act 9165, also known as the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, using the shabu, weighing P1 kilo, they recovered from him.RA 9165 outlawed possession and sale of narcotics and other regulated substances other than for medical use, but with state approval. We are grateful to his relatives who helped us bag him (Mamintal) for good, Azurin said.