COTABATO CITY (April 22, 2026) — Four individuals were arrested in separate police anti-narcotics operations in this city on Tuesday, April 21, enforced with the help of their own relatives and community leaders aware of their trafficking of shabu and marijuana in barangays around.

City and barangay officials confirmed to reporters on Wednesday that all the four suspects entrapped separately within just nine hours — Miraj Iman Pendaliday Yasin, Amil Salik Marcaban and the cohorts Nuriel Taula Albero and Ibrahim Endi Emban — are now detained in different police detention facilities in Cotabato City.

Brig Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Wednesday that the entrapment operations that led to the arrest of the four suspects, supervised by Col. Jibin Bongcayao, director of the Cotabato City Police Office, were laid with the help of their close relatives, annoyed by their having ignored their advices for them to stop their illegal activities and reform for good.

The first to fall in the three entrapment operations is Yasin, arrested after selling shabu to operatives from the Cotabato City Police Station 3, led by Capt. Eduardo Malicdem, at the Malagapas area in Barangay Rosary Heights 10.

Two hours later, combined personnel of the City Police Drug Enforcement Unit and the Cotabato City Police Precinct 1, under Major Teofisto Ferrer, Jr., immediately detained Albero and Emban after turning over to them shabu during a tradeoff in Purok Salamat in Mother Barangay Poblacion.

Marcaban was arrested on Tuesday night by an anti-narcotics team from the Cotabato City Police Station 4, led by their chief, Major Albert Carillo, after purchasing from him shabu along Sinsuat Avenue in Barangay Poblacion 5.

Bongcayao said barangay officials and Mayor Bruce Matabalao, chairperson of the Cotabato City Peace and Order Council, have assured to help prosecute in court the four now detained shabu peddlers.

Relatives and friends of the four suspects, who had earlier reported their criminal activities to Matabalao and city police officials, observed from a distance the three separate entrapment operations that led to their arrest and confiscation from them of shabu, to be used as evidence in prosecuting them for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Photo shows Marcaban affixing his signature to a document pertaining to his arrest. He is now in the locked in a police detention facility, awaiting prosecution in court. []