DAGUPAN CITY — A four-month surveillance operation in an alleged drug zone in this city resulted in a raid that netted nine suspects linked to a “shabu” laboratory in Sitio Tondaligan, Barangay Bonuan, the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) reported Monday.

PDEA Region 1 Director Robert Openia declined to release the names of the suspects pending further investigation on their probable associates “in high places.”

Leaders of the Muslim community in the area denied that those arrested were involved in drugs or that their neighborhood hosted a mini-shabu laboratory.

One of the Muslim elders told the Manila Bulletin that the shabu circulating in the city had come from Manila and Cavite.

But Openia said his operatives had monitored over the last four months that drugs proliferating in this city have come from Tondaligan and that the suspects were responsible for making and trafficking them.

He also said that the PDEA has been threatened with lawsuits by a Muslim association.

Muslim community leaders in Tondaligan accused the PDEA of conducting raids with the absence of a court-issued warrant.