Malaysia arrests suspected Jamaah "suicide squad"

Malaysia arrests suspected Jamaah "suicide squad"

Simon Cameron-Moore, Reuters, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysia said on Tuesday police had arrested four suspected
members of a religious militant group, including members of a
suicide squad who were part of a plot to bomb U.S. interests in
Singapore last year.

The four suspected members of Jamaah Islamiah (JI), the group
blamed for last month's bomb attacks that killed nearly 200
people on the Indonesian resort of Bali, were caught between Nov.
16 and Nov. 20 in the southern Malaysian state of Johor.

Three were Malaysian and one was Singaporean, a security
official said.

He said three of them were part of a suicide squad who were to
have provided back up to a Jamaah Islamiah cell which was broken
up last December after Singaporean police discovered plans to
attack the U.S. embassy and other targets there with truck bombs.

They were believed to be part of a group directed by Hambali,
a shadowy Indonesian preacher who has been identified by Malaysia
and Singapore as a Jamaah Islamiah ringleader, and one of the key
contacts with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

"I believe these groups identify themselves as a suicide
bombing (squad)...they call themselves as a suicide squad,"
police chief Norian Mai told a news conference.

The policeman, while revealing the latest arrests, said
Malaysia had not received any new information from the United
States, despite Washington's warnings last week to its citizens
in Malaysia of the risk of another Bali-style attack.

In Indonesia, police questioned Imam Samudra, the suspected
ground commander in the Bali bombings, over other attacks there.
Investigations linked both Samudra and militant Muslim cleric Abu
Bakar Bashir to several attacks in Indonesia two years ago.

Bashir, who denies accusations that he is the spiritual leader
of Jamaah Islamiah, spent most of the 1990s in Malaysia, based
around the west coast port of Klang.

Samudra had also operated from Klang, as did Hambali.
Police are still searching for Hambali.

Neither Hambali or Bashir have been tied to the Bali attacks
yet. Indonesian police say they have arrested 15 people so far in
the wake of the Bali investigation, but it is unclear how many
are directly implicated.

Another senior Malaysian security official described the men
captured in Johor this month as foot soldiers, rather than
leaders of Jamaah Islamiah.

"They are not big wheels, they are lower level," said the
official, who declined to be identified.

Officials say the four had fled Malaysia after their cell was
cracked last December, but were spotted sneaking back in the last
couple of months.

They were kept under surveillance before being picked up, and
police expect to make more arrests soon, officials said.

In the last year, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and
Singapore have arrested dozens of suspected members of the Jamaah
Islamiah, a Southeast Asian group linked to the al-Qaeda network.

The latest arrests take the number of suspected militants
being held in Malaysia under a tough internal security law to 73.

Police say Jamaah Islamiah is intent on building a Muslim
state spanning the southern Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore,
Indonesia and southern Thailand.

In October, Malaysian authorities said they had detained five
suspected Muslim militants, including one linked to al-Qaeda, the
group Washington says carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.