REUTERS

COTABATO CITY — A Philippine Navy contingent seized P2.7 million worth of cigarettes from Indonesia in an anti-smuggling operation a few miles off the shores of Hadji Muhtamad town in Basilan on Sunday.

Officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR) in Camp SK Pendatun in Parang, Maguindanao del Norte told reporters on Monday that the small boat carrying the contraband, M/B Water Blade, was intercepted by a seaborne team from the Western Mindanao Naval Command (WMNC).

The crewmen of the impounded boat were held for procedural questioning, according to officials of the WMNC, whose main headquarters is in Zamboanga City.

It was Rear Admiral Constancio M. Reyes, Jr., commander of the WMNC, who dispatched an offshore patrol group to the territorial waters of Basilan after receiving reports from confidential tipsters and PRO-BAR units about the supposed delivery of the Indonesian-made cigarettes to illegal traders in the island province.

The cigarettes are now in the custody of the WMNC and shall be turned over to the Bureau of Customs for proper disposition.

WMNC and PRO-BAR officials were quoted in radio reports on Monday morning as saying that they are thankful to the informants, among them local executives, who informed them about the shipment of the illegal merchandise from somewhere in Sulu to seaside areas in Basilan, enabling them to launch the operation that resulted in its interception.

Mr. Reyes said their off-shore anti-smuggling operations in the territorial seas of Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and the Zamboanga peninsula are part of the WMNC’s Comprehensive Archipelagic Defense Program, being supported by all units of PRO-BAR under the director of the Bangsamoro regional police, Brig. Gen. Jaysen C. De Guzman, and his counterpart in Region 9, Brig. Gen. Eleazar P. Matta. — John Felix M. Unson

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