MALAYSIA: man detained during a crackdown on Islamic militants in Malaysia met two of the suicide hijackers from the September 11th attacks on the United States, a source close to the investigation said yesterday.
The source said that the man, a Malaysian and one of 13 suspects arrested between December 9th and January 3rd, met Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in Malaysia less than a year before the attack.
The United States has identified al-Midhar and al-Hazmi as being among hijackers who flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon in Washington.
Malaysian police have detained close to 40 suspects in a crackdown dating back to August.
Their investigation is checking for links between Muslim militants from Malaysia and those of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The man who met the hijack suspects was detained after returning from neighbouring Thailand.
He is being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows detention without trial or access to a lawyer.
Malaysia said all the arrested men were suspected members of Kumpulan Militan Malaysia (KMM).
Police describe the KMM as a militant group seeking to wage a jihad or holy war to overthrow Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government.
The aim, they say, was to set up a purist Islamic state in multicultural Malaysia.
The country is seen as both a moderate Muslim state and a bulwark of stability in Southeast Asia.
Malaysian police link the KMM, which was unheard of before the first arrests in August, to groups in the Philippines and Indonesia which harbour ambitions to carve out an Islamic state in the mainly Muslim Malay Archipelago.
The source said a suspected ringleader, an Indonesian, was believed to have been in Afghanistan when the United States started its war there against bin Laden and his Taliban protectors on October 7th. "He hasn't been sighted since, and he could have been killed," the source added.
Malaysian police have been holding another Indonesian suspect since June. They say they became aware of the KKM after investigating a botched bank robbery last year.
Meanwhile, the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Junichiro Koizumi, arrived in Malaysia yesterday on the second leg of a tour aimed at bolstering trade and other ties with Southeast Asia.
Mr Koizumi, in the job less than a year, will meet Malaysia's Prime Minister, Mr Mahathir Mohamad, to explain the thrust of Japanese policy, which some observers say is being pushed as a counterweight to China's burgeoning influence in the region.