Malaysian militants took secrecy oath: Police

Malaysian militants took secrecy oath: Police

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Suspected Islamic militants imprisoned in Malaysia have sworn themselves to secrecy about their plot to set up a hardline Islamic state in Southeast Asia, police said on Monday.

The suspects, whom authorities have accused of links to the al-Qaeda terror network, used code names for security purposes and rarely knew each other's true identities, police intelligence officer Anuar Bushah told an inquiry by Malaysia's human rights commission.

Anuar's testimony gave a rare glimpse into the alleged activities of 62 suspected militants currently imprisoned under the Internal Security Act (ISA), which provides for people who threaten national security to be detained indefinitely without trial.

The suspects are accused of belonging to two organizations called Jemaah Islamiyah and the Malaysian Militant Group, which appear to overlap in membership.

Both are alleged to share the goal of toppling governments in Southeast Asia and creating an Islamic state in Muslim-dominated Malaysia, Indonesia and the southern Philippines.

Malaysian authorities arrested the suspects in separate crackdowns between mid-2001 and January this year. Jemaah Islamiyah has also been accused of plotting to attack U.S. and other Western targets in Singapore, which has also detained scores of suspects.

The government-backed human rights panel is holding an unprecedented inquiry into the treatment of people held under the security law. Dozens of detainees appeared at public hearings in June, and the inquiry resumed on Monday with police testimony.

Anuar said that police interrogated the militants for two months following their arrest, but most gave false evidence to protect their comrades who were still free and led officials on "a wild goose chase."

"They have taken an oath not to speak," said Anuar, who said he had handled cases under the security act for about 30 years. "They believed that what they did was right, but we kept telling them it was wrong."

Anuar said the suspects knew one another only by code names, so they couldn't identify the others once they had been arrested.

Although the commission has no authority to judge cases or to release inmates, many detainees have pleaded their innocence before it.

Among those detained is Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain whom authorities say allowed senior al-Qaeda members - plus two men who became hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks - to use an apartment he owned near Kuala Lumpur in January 2000.