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Thursday, June 01, 2006
Malaysian group helped top Indon terror suspects flee to Philippines, police say (1:57 p.m.)
KUALA LUMPUR -- A Malaysian militant group that helped two top Indonesian terror suspects flee to the southern Philippines following the Bali bombings in
2002 has been crippled with the arrest of 12 alleged operatives, Malaysian police said.
Dulmatin and Umar Patek, two alleged leaders in the al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network, were among seven Indonesians who slipped into the Philippines with the help of a group called Darul Islam between 2003 and March 2006, national police chief Bakri Omar said Wednesday.
Washington has offered huge rewards for the capture of both men, who are key suspects in the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on Indonesia's resort island of Bali.
Philippine security officials have said they fled to the southern Mindanao region to escape an Indonesian government manhunt and are believed to be hiding with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in areas where Filipino Islamic insurgents waged a decades-long secessionist war.
Malaysian police arrested 12 suspected Darul Islam members - six Malaysians, three Indonesians and three Filipinos - between March 16 and April 3, mostly in
Malaysia's eastern Sabah state on Borneo island, which borders Indonesia and the southern Philippines, Bakri said.
"With these arrests, police have paralyzed Sabah's Darul Islam underground militant network, which cooperated with Indonesian militants," Bakri said in a
statement.
"The role of Darul Islam Sabah was to help Indonesian militants transit to the southern Philippines, smuggle weapons from the southern Philippines to Indonesia and obtain military training in the southern Philippines," Bakri added.
Bakri said that 11 Darul Islam suspects were being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial. One Filipino initially detained was released after the arrests, Bakri said without elaborating.
During the arrests, police seized two automatic pistols and ammunition meant to be smuggled to Ambon, the capital of Indonesia's Maluku province where
clashes between Muslims and Christians have occurred, as well as jihadist documents, Bakri said.
"Darul Islam Sabah claims its objective is to establish a regional Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Philippines through militant activities," Bakri said, without elaborating on the size of the organization.
According to the International Crisis Group think tank and other analysts, Darul Islam was the name given to regional rebellions in Indonesia's West Java province in 1948, and in South Sulawesi and Aceh provinces in 1953.
They later united into a movement to set up an Islamic state in Indonesia. The al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah, a splinter of Darul Islam, emerged in 1993.
Malaysia was a key ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism after the September 11 attacks. In its aftermath, the government rounded up
and jailed scores of suspected Jemaah Islamiyah members of Jemaah Islamiyah under the Internal Security Act.
Malaysia was also believed to be a planning center and dispatch point for the September 11 attackers, and at least one Malaysian was recruited by al-Qaida to pilot a plane in a second wave of September 11-style attacks on the United States. The attacks never took place. (AP) |
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