Two face terror charge

By WONG CHUN WAI and LOURDES CHARLES
KUALA LUMPUR: Two men being detained at Guantanamo Bay are likely to become the first Malaysians to be charged with terrorist activities in a US court.
Mohd Farik Amin @ Zaid @ Zubair, 34, and Mohammed Nazir Lep @ Bashir Lep @ Lillie, 33, who have been regarded as “dangerous” by the international intelligence agencies, could also be relocated to other federal detention centres.
However, it is understood that there could be a third option — they could be deported here on the Malaysian Government’s request.
Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan said he was informed by the US authorities during an informal meeting recently that the two would likely be charged in a civil court.
“We are waiting for further details from the US,” he said.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was reported as saying in Dubai that Malaysia would seek permission from the US government to allow Malaysian policemen to meet with the two detainees and then have them imprisoned in Malaysia.
The status of the 250 detainees at Guantanamo remains unclear following the order by President Barack Obama to shut down the centre within a year. The former naval camp located in Cuba was turned into a detention centre after the Sept 11 attacks in New York.
Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir are members of the outlawed radical Jemaah Islamiah, which wanted to set up a pan-Islamic region spanning Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei through violent means.
Both men, who had received arms training in Afghanistan, were arrested in 2003 in Bangkok in a special joint operation involving the Thai national police and the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Their arrests led to the capture of Hambali, a key man for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network in South-East Asia.
Hambali’s wife, Noralwiza Lee Abdullah, 39, a Malaysian from Sabah, was also detained under the Internal Security Act in 2003 but was released in 2007.
It is understood that she was allowed to exchange correspondence with her husband with the assistance of the International Red Cross Society.
Both Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir have been listed among 14 key terror suspects by the United States, and are being held in Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay.
All three (Hambali, Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir) were implicated in the nightclub bombings in Bali in 2002, in which 202 people were killed, and also the 2003 bomb attack at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people.
Sources said the Malaysians have also been implicated in a planned al-Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked plane into the 73-storey Library Tower/US Bank Tower in Los Angeles.
“No date was given for the mission but the plot, named Project California, would have been the biggest since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in New York,” an official said.
Sources said Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir had accompanied three Malaysians — now under detention in Kamunting under the Internal Security Act – to pledge their allegiance to Osama.
“The other three Malaysians, fired up by Osama’s sermons, met Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, a top al-Qaeda leader now also imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, to plan their plot.
Khaled is described by the United States as “one of history’s most infamous terrorists” and is regarded as the suspected mastermind behind the Sept 11 attacks. “Project California was supposed to be the second wave of attacks by the al-Qaeda, but it failed when intelligence forces got wind of it. Two of the Malaysians were arrested when they returned to Malaysia in 2002,” the sources revealed.

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