Sept. 11 hijackers met Malaysian suspect<\/p>\n
Reuters, Kuala Lumpur<\/p>\n
A man detained during a crackdown on militants in Malaysia met
\ntwo of the suicide hijackers from the Sept. 11 attacks on the
\nUnited States, a source close to the investigation said on
\nThursday.<\/p>\n
The source told Reuters the man, a Malaysian and one of 13
\nsuspects arrested between Dec. 9 and Jan. 3, met Khalid al-Midhar
\nand Nawaf al-Hazmi in Malaysia less than a year before the
\nattack.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has identified al-Midhar and al-Hazmi as being among
\nhijackers who flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon
\nin Washington.<\/p>\n
Malaysian police have detained close to 40 suspects in a
\ncrackdown dating back to August and are checking for links
\nbetween homegrown militants and suspected Sept. 11 mastermind
\nOsama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.<\/p>\n
The man who met the hijack suspects was detained after
\nreturning from neighboring Thailand. He is being held under the
\nInternal Security Act, which allows detention without trial or
\naccess to a lawyer.<\/p>\n
Malaysia said all the arrested men were suspected members of
\nKumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM).<\/p>\n
Police describe the KMM as a militant group seeking to wage a
\njihad or holy war to overthrow Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's
\ngovernment.<\/p>\n
Their aim, they say, is to set up a purist Islamic state in
\nmulticultural Malaysia, a country seen as both a moderate Muslim
\nstate and a bulwark of stability in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n
The source said a suspected ringleader, an Indonesian, was
\nbelieved to have been in Afghanistan when the United States
\nlaunched its war there against bin Laden and his Taliban
\nprotectors on Oct. 7.<\/p>\n
"He hasn't been sighted since, and he could have been killed,"
\nthe source added.<\/p>\n
Malaysian police have been holding another Indonesian suspect
\nsince June.<\/p>\n
While some of the detained men and some on the wanted list in
\nMalaysia are believed to hail from neighboring Indonesia, Jakarta
\nsaid there has been no coordination with either Malaysia or
\nSingapore over the latest batch of arrests in those countries.<\/p>",
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