PENANG (Malaysia): Walking along the narrow streets here, lined with road-side stalls catering to teeming crowds tucking into their favourite spicy dishes, it is difficult to guess that suspected terrorists could be lying in the background, poised to endanger national security.
So the Jan 4 announcement that 13 alleged Muslim fighters belonging to the so-called Malaysian Mujahideen (or Militant) Group (KMM) had been arrested between Dec 9 and Jan 3 has raised more than a few eyebrows.
They were detained under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.
The following day, the Home Ministry in neighbouring Singapore announced that police in the island republic had detained 14 Singaporeans and a Malaysian under the republic’s internal security law for alleged involvement in terrorist activities, including procuring materials for making bombs and surveillance of potential targets.
Malaysia’s deputy home minister, Zainal Abidin Zin, said that the government hoped to interrogate the Malaysian held in Singapore, 39-year-old businessman Faiz Abu Bakar Bafana, as part of its efforts to uncover an alleged link among suspected terrorists groups in the region.
Zainal said that the government had discovered a link between terrorist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan with similar groups in the region, but needed more information to find out the extent of their cooperation.
In disclosing Friday’s arrests, police chief Norian Mai was reported as saying that police were confirming reports that several KMM members had ties with Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman facing charges in the United States in connection with the Sept 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Local news bulletins have reported the revelations in a matter-of-fact style, but there has been little in-depth discussion.
It is difficult to gauge how ordinary Malaysians view the alleged terrorist threat due to a reluctance to share personal views and curbs on the media, but there appears to be few signs of undue concern among many Malaysians that peace and stability is at risk.
“I have heard some people mentioning the arrests, but I don’t know much about it,” said a mechanic in his forties.
A woman in her thirties had her doubts about a terrorist network in Malaysia, saying she was not entirely convinced about the seriousness of the threat - but “that’s just my view, I am just a nobody,” she remarked.
Public interest groups have been fairly muted, probably due to an unwillingness to question the official theory of a regional terrorist network in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, and the sensitivity of the issue for the government. —Dawn/ InterPress Service.