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.