Posted on 02/26/2003 9:50:56 AM PST by Destro
Former Bosnian U.N. peacekeeping colonel arrested for membership in Islamic terror network
Jemaah Islamiyah member arrested in Malaysia, rights group says
Wed, Feb 26, 2003
By SEAN YOONG, Associated Press Writer
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Police have arrested a former army colonel suspected of being a member of a Malaysian cell of the Islamic terror network Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been blamed for the Oct. 12 Bali bombings, a human rights group said Wednesday.
Abdul Manaf Kamsuri, who once served in a United Nations (news - web sites) peacekeeping force in Bosnia, was detained at his home Feb. 20 in the Shah Alam district near Kuala Lumpur under a law that allows indefinite detention without trial, said Badaruddin Ismail of Malaysian rights group Suaram.
Badaruddin said Abdul Manaf's family informed the group of the arrest and said police told them he was a member of Malaysian Militant Group, a local cell of Jemaah Islamiyah, which seeks a pan-Islamic state in Southeast Asia covering Malaysia, the southern Philippines and Indonesia.
National police chief Norian Mai, quoted by the national news agency Bernama, confirmed the arrest.
Since mid-2001, authorities in this moderate, predominantly Muslim country have arrested more than 70 suspected Islamic militants, including dozens of alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for last year's attack on Indonesia's Bali island that killed 202 people, including many foreign tourists.
Security officials say Jemaah Islamiyah has ties to Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaida terror network and accuse it of planning attacks on U.S. and other Western diplomatic missions in Singapore and Malaysia.
Badaruddin said Abdul Manaf was a human resource manager at an Islamic financial institution and also was a district leader in the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, the country's largest opposition group, which Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government has accused of fomenting extremism.
Arrests of Jemaah Islamiyah suspects are usually promptly announced by police, but Badaruddin said authorities apparently were trying to keep news of the latest detention under wraps over the past week, while Malaysia hosted a conference of the 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement.
Suaram said in a statement Wednesday that the arrest "exposes the two faces of the Malaysian government and the hypocrisy of its rhetoric of justice and peace so loudly spoken at the NAM summit."
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