KARACHI, Sept 22: The Malaysian and Indonesian students, arrested a couple of days ago at two seminaries, were not produced before any court on Monday as the law-enforcement agencies continued their grilling at an undisclosed investigation cell.

Informed sources told Dawn that the authorities did not produce the religious students before the court as the were supposed to be deported back to their respective countries.

The sources said that of the arrested students two were Indonesians identified as Mohammed Saifuddin and J. Mohammed. The others were Malaysians. They included Mohammed Khaidair, Mohammed Ikhwaq, Ahmed Firdous, Mohammed Radzi, Amin, Ahmed Muaz Abu Zar, Zubair, Faiz Hasan and Arafeen.

The authorities arrested the students from Jamia Abu Bakar and Jamia Darasatul Islamia.

According to seminaries’ managements, the raiding parties asked for the list of all students and then short-listed Malaysians and Indonesians.

Reports suggest that the suspected students also included the younger brother of Hambali, who is considered Asia’s pointman for Al-Qaeda and operation chief for the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiya group.

“I believe it is so,” interior ministry spokesman Iftikhar Ahmed told AFP.

“I don’t have it in writing in front of me but that is what I’ve heard.”

Indonesian media reports on Monday identified the detainee as Gun Gun Rusman Gunawan and quoted Hambali’s cousin Dani saying that Gunawan was a younger brother.

The Al-Qaeda-linked JI terror network is blamed for a string of attacks in Indonesia, including last October’s Bali bombings which killed 202 people, a hotel bombing last month in Jakarta which killed 12 people and church bombings on Christmas Eve in 2000 across the country.

Foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan said it was too early to determine whether the Indonesian student, one of 15 people arrested in pre-dawn raids on seminaries and hostels in Karachi on Saturday, was Hambali’s brother.

“No final determination has been made. Investigations are under way so it is not proper to jump to conclusions,” he told a weekly press briefing in Islamabad.

“The arrests were made in pursuance of our aim to interdict, to investigate terrorists, and suspected terrorists in this case,” Mr Khan told reporters.

“These are suspected terrorists or people who have links with terrorists.”

The students had been under surveillance for several weeks on suspicion of activities not in Pakistan’s national interest and for links to JI, an intelligence official said.

“There is a possibility that some of them have links with Jemaah Islamiyah,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity. The Indonesians had been studying at the Abu Bakar seminary with 1,900 other students in Gulshan-i-Iqbal neighbourhood.

Islamabad has been cracking down on foreign students in its 10,000 Madaris, throwing out those overstaying their visas and banning foreign funding.

It has been trying to regulate the Madaris since last year, requiring them to register and urging them to expand their curricula beyond routine Quranic learning.

An AFP reporter who visited the Abu Bakar school on Monday saw several foreign students still attending classes.

Students said Gunawan had been a pupil at the school, but none would comment on the arrests.

MALAYSIAN DY PM: Investigations into top terror suspect Hambali provided information which led to the arrest of 13 Malaysians in Pakistan, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on Monday.