Malaysian police arrest two members of S.E. Asian militant group
Malaysian police arrest two members of S.E. Asian militant group
Associated Press Kuala Lumpur
Malaysian police have arrested two suspected members of a cell of Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), the Islamic extremist network suspected of 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 on 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 JI recruits traveling through Malaysia on their way to camps in the southern Philippines for military training, the official said.
Police in Sandakan had last month 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 (JI's) activities in this region," the official said. JI 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 JI members. They are being held under strict security laws allowing indefinite detention without trial.
Regional security officials have said that JI 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.