Malaysia arrests seven Filipinos suspected of Abu Sayyaf links
Police in Malaysia have arrested seven suspected members of the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf militant group.
National police chief Mohamad Fuzi Harun said on Thursday that the seven men, aged between 22 and 38, worked as security guards at private companies in and around the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
“One suspect, a 22-year-old, was an Abu Sayyaf group member involved in clashes with the military and kidnapping of hostages in the southern Philippines,” he said in a statement, without giving details about the other suspects.
Harun said that the men had sneaked into Malaysia from eastern Sabah State, on Borneo Island, off the southern coast of the Philippines, in September 2015 and had used forged travel documents to fly to the capital city.
“The police will continue to launch operations to detect and catch foreign terrorist elements that infiltrate Malaysia,” the police chief stressed.
Earlier this month, Malaysian authorities arrested a notorious leader of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, Hajar Abdul Mubin, aka Abu Asrie, in an operation in Kuala Lumpur.
Abu Sayyaf, known for bombings, beheadings, extortion and kidnaps-for-ransom in the south of the Philippines, has pledged allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is currently operating in the Middle East and North Africa.
Militants loyal to Daesh seized the city of Marawi in the southern Philippines in May, prompting a sweeping government operation in the city and other areas in the southern one third of the country.
Governments in Southeast Asia have been anxiously watching Abu Sayyaf’s expansion in the region. They fear that Daesh may want to gain a foothold in their region in the face of increasing losses in Iraq and Syria, where national militaries have been successfully fighting the terrorists.
Malaysia shares a porous maritime border with the Philippines in the Sabah region. Authorities have intensified a crackdown on Takfiri terrorist elements as nationals who had previously joined Daesh are returning home from the Middle East. Some 250 people were arrested between 2013 and 2016 on suspicions of links to Daesh in Malaysia.
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