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.