Moro rebel group unaware of Malaysian militant link
Moro rebel group unaware of Malaysian militant link
Agencies, Kuala Lumpur
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist Philippine rebel group, said on Sunday it was not aware that any members of a militant Malaysian Muslim group had trained at its camps.
Dozens of suspected militants have been detained in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines recently, with some linked to regional terror plots and to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Malaysian police chief Norian Mai said last week that 19 of the 23 members of a group called Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM) arrested since Dec. 9 received militant training overseas.
Nine of them trained at Camp Abu Bakar run by the MILF in the southern Philippines, he said.
Several of the men were Singaporeans and Indonesians with permanent residency status in Malaysia.
But Eid Kabalu, a MILF spokesman, was quoted by Malaysia's official Bernama news agency as saying that the group did not have a policy of admitting foreigners into its training camps.
"We need to know the time they received the training, so that we can check," he told Bernama.
Kabalu said there was a possibility that the nine KMM members could have disguised themselves as locals to enter the MILF camps and receive training.
"This is a possibility which we cannot discount," he said.
The Philippine government signed a cease-fire agreement in October with the MILF, which fought for nearly 30 years for a separatist Islamic state on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
Kabalu said the MILF was transparent in its operation and had no links with other groups in the region.
Malaysian authorities accuse the KMM of seeking to overthrow the government and install an Islamic state in multicultural Malaysia and also say it has links with al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, Singapore acknowledged on Saturday it shared information with the Philippines which led to the arrest of a suspected militant allegedly involved in a plot to bomb U.S. targets here.
The government cited the information-sharing as an example of the cooperation among Southeast Asian security agencies in the fight against terrorism.
Philippine authorities have acknowledged that a tip from Singapore was instrumental in the arrest of the suspect, Fathur Rohman Al Ghozi, an Indonesian.
"Arising from information that the Internal Security Department (ISD) shared, the Philippines arrested Fathur Rohman Al Ghozi recently," the Singapore government said in a statement.
"The arrest is an example of the close cooperation between ISD and its foreign counterparts in the fight against international terrorism," it said.
Acting on the tip-off, Philippine authorities earlier this month arrested Al Ghozi, a bomb expert who was allegedly involved in a plot to blow up American targets in Singapore.
Thirteen suspected terrorists detained in Singapore have identified him as one of several foreigners whom they had worked with.
Al Ghozi and the 13 detainees are alleged to be members of Jemaah Islamiah, an extremist group based in Southeast Asia which is said to be linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Al Ghozi, who arrived in Singapore in October, allegedly helped the group make video recordings of potential targets including the U.S., Australian, British and Israeli embassies and commercial buildings housing American firms.
Al Ghozi's arrest led to several other detentions and the discovery of a cache of explosives and weapons in the southern Philippines.
In the statement, the government also clarified a report that three of several suspected Jemaah Islamiah members arrested by Malaysian authorities recently were Singaporean.
One of the three, Shukry Omar Talib, renounced his Singaporean citizenship in 1987. The two others, Muhamad Ismail Anuwarul and Abdul Nasir Anuwarul, are permanent residents of Malaysia, it said.
Separately, an Indonesian Muslim cleric being investigated for alleged involvement in an al-Qaeda regional network has denied calling for a holy war in Singapore and Malaysia.
But Ustad Abu Bakar Ba'asyir told Singapore's Sunday Times that the largely Roman Catholic Philippines deserved to be the target of a jihad, and admitted having met some militants detained in Singapore and Malaysia over the past decade as a preacher.
Dozens of suspects linked by authorities to the al-Qaeda international network led by fugitive militant Osama bin laden have been rounded up in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines in the wake of the September attacks in the United States.
Ba'asyir denied while under Indonesian police questioning last week that he was associated with al-Qaeda but hailed bin Laden as "a true Muslim fighter."
"I advocate jihad because it is important in the Koran," the 64-year-old Ba'asyir was quoted as saying in the interview with the Singapore newspaper.