Agents of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had clamped down three seafarers, selling shabu from one island to another, in an entrapment operation Barangay Boki in Mapun, Tawi-Tawi on Wednesday, August 20, 2025.

Local executives in Mapun, an island town in Tawi-Tawi in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, told reporters on Thursday, August 21, that agents of PDEA-BARMM and police operatives had seized P54,000 worth of shabu from Siri Abdulrahman, Shermie Abdulrahman and Ejing Hamja during a tradeoff in Barangay Boki.

Gil Cesario Castro, director of PDEA-BARMM, said the suspects yielded peacefully when they sensed that they had sold eight grams of shabu to non-uniformed anti-narcotics agents and policemen at one spot in Barangay Moki in Mapun.

Municipal officials and ranking members of the multi-sector Tawi-Tawi Provincial Peace and Order Council, whose chairperson is Gov. Yshmael Sali, had confirmed to reporters that the now detained suspects moved from one island to another to distribute shabu to buyers in the local communities.

They assured to help the PDEA-BARMM identify the accomplices of the three suspects in Tawi-Tawi’s island towns.

Castro said the PDEA-BARMM is grateful to personnel of the Mapun Municipal Police Station and the Tawi-Tawi Provincial Police Office for supporting the entrapment operation that resulted in the detention of the three suspects, now awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Photo shows the three shabu dealers entrapped by PDEA-BARMM agents and policemen in Mapun, now locked in a detention facility. (August 21, 2025, Tawi-Tawi Province, Bangsamoro Region)