Ten people arrested last week in Malaysia on suspicion of terror activities have ties to a Nigerian accused of attempting to blow up a US plane last month, a newspaper report says.
New Straits Times quoted sources as saying the men were linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with seeking to detonate explosives on a plane as it landed in Detroit on December 25.
Source: The Agencies
New Straits Times quoted sources as saying the men were linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with seeking to detonate explosives on a plane as it landed in Detroit on December 25.
- On Wednesday Malaysia's home minister announced the arrests under Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA), saying they were mainly foreigners linked to an international terror network.
- At a news conference on Thursday a rights group said that the 10 include four men from Syria, two from Nigeria and one each from Yemen and Jordan.
- Muhammad Yunus Zainal Abidin, who witnessed last week's arrests, identified one of the detainees as Aiman al-Dakkak, a 50-year-old Syrian freelance religious teacher who has been living in Malaysia since 2003.
- Muhammad Yunus said he was with about 50 men at a religious talk by Aiman on January 21 at his home on the outskirts of the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, when police stormed the house.
- He said the police, wearing bullet-proof vests and armed with machine guns, took all the men to a police training centre in the city.
- An observer, Muhammad Yunus said most of them at the talk were international students aged between 20 and 40, and comprising Malaysians, Nigerians, Eritreans, Syrians, Jordanians, a Saudi Arabian and an American.
- He said police wanted to know if anyone in the group was from Yemen, Russia or Pakistan, and later separated them by nationalities for questioning.
- Hishammuddin Hussein, the Malaysian home minister, did not give details on the arrests saying it may jeopardise the investigations.
- He said the detainees posed a "serious threat" to security and that their arrests were based on co-operation with foreign intelligence agencies.
- "This is a very good wake-up call for us because the playground for terrorists is no longer just one nation. The whole world is their playground," he added.
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