Patriotic people helped PDEA bag young drug dealer in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO - It was friends and relatives who gave on Wednesday a 22-year-old large-scale narcotics trader away.Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency- recovered P2.5 million worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) from the now detained Raffy Osama, who was arrested in a drug sting Wednesday in Barangay Capiton in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.Juvenal Azurin, PDEA director for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said on Thursday that it was for the cooperation of Osama’s friends and relatives that they managed to entrap him in an operation involving agents disguised as drug dependents.Osama was frisked and immediately cuffed just as he was to hand over 10 packs of shabu to agents during a trade off along a national highway in Barangay Capiton. He is one of our big targets and our surveillance was hastened with the help of his friends and relatives and vigilant barangay officials in Cotabato City and in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Azurin said.Relatives of Osama confirmed to reporters Thursday that he resides in Barangay Bagua in Cotabato City and distributes his illegal merchandise to contacts in nearby towns in Maguindanao.Azurin said Wednesday’s operation that resulted in the arrest of Osama, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was assisted by personnel of the Datu Odin Sinsuat municipal police led by Chief Inspector Lendsy Sinsuat.Osama was quick to tell the team that entrapped him that he is only a courier working for a leader of a drug ring operating in Cotabato City and in Maguindanao province. We are privy to his narcotics peddling activities because of patriotic people around him who informed us about it, Azurin said.Azurin said Osama, a criminology student, is in their list of high-value targets, among them 47-year-old Mohammad Tuankali Macalimpas.Macalimpas, an alleged member of the 105thBase Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was arrested via a PDEA dragnet on Tuesday in Pigcawayan town in North Cotabato.He was nabbed in the act of selling more than P2 million worth of shabu to combined agents from PDEA’s regional offices in ARMM and from Region 12 in General Santos City.Two companions of Macalimpas, Samsodin Kato, 30, and the 20-year-old Noraida Samaon Alamada, were also arrested.Besides shabu, PDEA agents also recovered from Macalimpas a 9 millimeter pistol.