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Sunday, 18 July 2010

Terrorist recruiting students held under ISA

The Star
by LOURDES CHARLES

KUALA LUMPUR: One of the country’s most wanted terror suspects who is allegedly involved in recruiting university students for Jemaah Islamiah (JI) has been detained under the Internal Security Act.

Mohamad Fadzullah Abbul Razak, who graduated from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in Skudai, Johor, in 2005, was arrested by police officers from the Special Task Force (Operations and Counter Terrorism) Department on Thursday.

It is learnt that the 28-year-old engineer, whom the task force had been hunting since 2007, had just returned from Thailand when he was arrested by the officers at a house in Keramat here.

Sources said the man had allegedly been recruiting undergraduates from UTM as well as other institutions of higher learning into JI and had even sent several of them to participate in “holy wars.”

According to them, intelligence reports showed one of his recruits was a 17-year-old student.

The Task Force’s director, Commissioner Datuk Mohamed Fuzi Harun, confirmed the arrest but declined to elaborate.

Last January, his department arrested 10 students for alleged involvement in terrorism activities.

Investigations revealed that certain people had infiltrated institutions of higher learning and universities to recruit students to participate in “holy wars” in the region.

The students, most of them foreigners, have since been deported as investigations showed they were planning to blow up some non-Muslim places of worship in Selangor and in Penang.

Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan had said then police would continue to monitor the activities of certain individuals suspected of being involved in such activities.

He had also instructed his officers to meet with universities and institutions of higher learning to brief them on the latest incident where undergraduates had been targeted by certain terror groups.

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