Interpol tapped to bag Manila ‘drug queen’

THE Philippines had asked the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to help locate Manila’s alleged “drug queen,” Guia Gomez Castro, Interior Secretary Eduardo Año said on Sunday.

Castro was initially reported by the Bureau of Immigration to be in Thailand, based on her travel record, which showed that she boarded a Cebu Pacific flight bound for Bangkok.

“For now, we are not sure if she is really in Thailand. Our Office of Transnational Crimes [in the Philippine National Police] has been working with the Interpol about this to help us in tracing [Castro],” Año said in a radio interview.

He said the government “already knows” where Castro is, but he refused to say where.

An Interpol “Red Notice” on Castro was also being worked out, Año added.

A Red Notice means that a person is wanted for crimes in his or her country.

This was the same notice sought for exiled Communist Party of the Philippines founder Jose Maria Sison, who has been ordered arrested by a Manila court for murder over the Inopacan, Leyte massacre in the 1980s.

Metro Manila police chief Maj. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar earlier said the police was working several Manila courts where drug charges had been filed against Castro.

Castro has been reportedly in cahoots with rogue police officers, who were tagged as “ninja cops” for allegedly protecting her and her so- called business of reselling illegal drugs seized during law enforcement operations.

She was village chairman of Manila’s Barangay 484, Zone 48.