P60.9-M drugs seized in Zamboanga City

COTABATO CITY — Policemen seized from three couriers 89 kilograms of crystal meth (shabu), costing P60.9 million, in an anti-narcotics operation in Barangay Rio Hondo in Zamboanga City early Sunday.

Local executives and members of the multi-sector Zamboanga City Peace and Order Council told reporters at noon Sunday that the suspects are now detained.

Brig. Eleazar P. Matta, director of the Police Regional Office-9 (PRO-9), had told reporters that personnel of different PRO-9 units and operatives of the Police Drug Enforcement Group-Special Operation Unit-9 had promptly blocked the route of the three men in one of the streets in Barangay Rio Hondo after learning from vigilant tipsters about their supposed delivery to contacts somewhere in Zamboanga City.

The suspects yielded peacefully when policemen flagged down their red Nissan Livina, ordered them to disembark and confiscated the shabu piled inside the vehicle.

Mr. Matta said the operation was assisted by local executives, officials the Zamboanga City Police Office and confidential informants aware of their involvement in large-scale trafficking of shabu and marijuana in the Zamboanga peninsula and in the provinces of Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao del Norte, both in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).

Officials of the Bangsamoro regional police command had told reporters that the three suspects also have accomplices in BARMM’s Lanao del Sur province and in its capital, Marawi City. — John Felix M. Unson