Malaysian police arrest 2 suspected JI members

Malaysian police arrest 2 suspected JI members

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian police have arrested two suspected members of a cell of
Jamaah Islamiyah, an Islamic group suspected in a string of plots
and attacks in Southeast Asia, a government official said on
Sunday.

The two men, both Malaysian religious teachers in their 30s,
were detained early Saturday in Sandakan, a town in Malaysia's
Sabah state on Borneo island, the official said on condition of
anonymity.

The suspects, whose identities were not revealed, were part of
a cell that arranged accommodation and transport for new Jamaah
Islamiyah recruits traveling through Malaysia on their way to
camps in the southern Philippines for military training, the
official said.

Last month, police in Sandakan arrested two other alleged
members of the cell.

All four suspects had been fairly active in the past but had
not carried out work for Jamaah Islamiyah in recent months, the
official said. Their cell leader was believed to have escaped to
Indonesia in late 2001.

"Police hope to get fresh leads from the suspects on the
extent of (Jamaah Islamiyah's) activities in this region," the
official said.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, commenting on Saturday's
arrests, said more Jamaah Islamiah members might be detained
soon.

The authorities knew their movements and would arrest them
"when the time came," Mahathir was quoted as saying by the
Bernama national news agency.

Jamaah Islamiyah is the main suspect in the Oct. 12 bombings
in Bali, Indonesia, that killed more than 190 people, mostly
foreign tourists.

Security officials say Jamaah Islamiyah has ties to Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and accuse it of planning attacks
on U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions in Singapore and
Malaysia.

Since mid-2001, authorities in mostly Muslim Malaysia have
arrested more than 70 suspected Islamic militants, including
dozens of alleged members of Jamaah Islamiyah. They are being
held under strict security laws allowing indefinite detention
without trial.

"They have been arrested under the ISA," a spokesman at
federal police headquarters said, referring to the Internal
Security Act, used extensively by authorities for nearly two
years now to hold without trial suspected Islamic militants.

The group, which aims to turn Malaysia, the southern
Philippines and Indonesia into an Islamic state, was linked to
the al-Qaeda network accused of the September 2001 attacks on the
United States, regional authorities say.

Malaysia, which had begun arresting suspected Islamic
militants even before the September attacks, said last November
that those in its custody had been identified as Jamaah Islamiah
operatives or sympathizers, with many having received military
training in Afghanistan.

Regional security officials have said that Jamaah Islamiyah
members received arms and bomb-making training at al-Qaeda camps
in Afghanistan and in camps in the southern Philippines run by
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a rebel group.

Malaysia's Sabah state has close geographic and historical
ties to the southern Philippines, a mostly Muslim region in the
predominantly Catholic Philippines where the government has been
battling insurgencies for years.

Sabah is a short boat ride from the southern Philippines.
Jamaah Islamiyah wants to establish a pan-Islamic state in
Southeast Asia covering Malaysia, the southern Philippines and
Indonesia.