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By Leslie Lopez, The Straits Times THE Malaysian government has released without publicity more than a dozen Muslim extremists linked to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror organisation.
They include Malaysian Yazid Sufaat, who is believed to have abetted the Sept 11 attacks in New York. A senior Malaysian government official told The Straits Times that the Indonesian, Malaysian and Filipino detainees were freed over the past month after a government advisory board at the Kamunting Detention Centre in Perak decided that they were no longer security threats. Also released was a Thai national, Kasem Dayama, who was arrested in October 2006 for espionage, the official said. Their release has not been publicised. Coming on the heels of the executions last month of the three Bali bombers in Indonesia, Malaysia's move has raised eyebrows among the region's intelligence community and security experts. Security analysts warned of reprisal attacks after Indonesia executed Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra for their role in the 2002 bombings of two Bali nightclubs that left more than 200 people dead. Many of the detainees just released in Malaysia knew the Bali bombers well and are known to several JI militants who are still at large, including Noordin Mohammad Top and the Singapore detainee who escaped, Mas Selamat Kastari. Regional intelligence officials fear that the freed men might still be anti-Western and could easily return to their underground networks in places such as the predominantly Muslim regions of southern Thailand and southern Philippines. 'There is clearly a more relaxed approach to the way Kuala Lumpur is dealing with suspected terrorists,' one senior Western intelligence official based in South-east Asia said, adding that his government security agencies would be seeking more information from their Malaysian counterparts. A senior Malaysian government official who declined to be named defended the detainees' release. He insisted that Kuala Lumpur remained committed to the fight against religious extremism, and stressed that the men who were released had been rehabilitated after an intensive programme. 'Some of them, like Yazid, have been detained for more than six years and the (advisory) board was comfortable that these men have been rehabilitated,' he said. He added that Yazid, who was arrested in December 2001, had shown 'huge improvement' in recent years under the rehabilitation programme. Again, he declined to elaborate. The 43-year-old Yazid is by far the most prominent of the JI suspects released by Malaysia. A trained biochemist and former army captain, he emerged as a key figure in JI's regional network because of his link to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent who was convicted on conspiracy charges in the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Yazid hosted Moussaoui during his visit to Malaysia in September and October 2000. Eight months earlier, he allowed Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to use his apartment. They were the two hijackers on board the American Airlines aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon. Yazid was to have been detained until Jan 31, 2010, according to security officials. Sources said his release was subject to conditions. A resident of Selangor, he cannot leave the state without the permission of the state police chief. Similar conditions apply to Sabah resident Sulaiman Suramin, who was arrested in 2003 and is among those just released. The foreign nationals released by the Malaysian government were mainly lowly functionaries of JI, which has ambitions of establishing a pan-Islamic state linking Indonesia, Malaysia and the Muslim southern islands of the Philippines. Sources said the freed foreigners included eight Indonesians who were detained for two days at a West Java detention centre before being allowed to return to their families. The Indonesians include: Ahmad Zakaria, who was arrested off Sabah in 2004; Arifin Iwan, who was caught in 2005 en route to the southern Philippines. He had been active in sectarian fighting in Ambon and Poso; Terhamid Dahlan alias Adi Utomo Sukamto, who was arrested while trying to enter Sabah illegally in 2004; Zakaria Saman, alias Ahmad Said Maulana, who was arrested in 2003 while returning from south-east Philippines. He fought in Ambon and received his military training in the southern Philippines. Philippine nationals Shaykinar Guat and Argadi Andoyok were arrested in 2006 off Sabah. It is not clear whether they have been released since they were handed over to the Philippine authorities. Thai national Kasem Dayama was also arrested in 2006, but he had no links to JI. Malaysian security officials say he was arrested for spying on southern Thais seeking refuge in Kelantan. Malaysian government sources said there are another 30 suspected JI operatives, a handful of them foreigners, still in detention at the Kamunting detention centre. ************************************** Yazid Sufaat: From bright student to key JI operative 
Yazid
Yazid emerged as a key figure in JI's regional network because of his link to Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent who was convicted of conspiracy charges in the Sept 11 attacks in New York. 
Zacarias Moussaoui
He hosted Moussaoui during his visit to Malaysia in September and October 2000. 
Khalid al-Midhar
Nawaf al-Hazmi
Yazid's apartment in Kuala Lumpur
Yazid allowed Khalid al-Midhar (bottom left) and Nawaf al-Hazmi (bottom right), the two hijackers who were aboard the American Airlines place that crashed into the Pentagon, to use his apartment in Kuala Lumpur.
YAZID SUFAAT was a key operative of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) terror network and was often tapped for several important assignments by the radical group's leadership. These included hosting key Al-Qaeda operatives such as Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi - the two hijackers of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001, regional security officials say. Yazid, who grew up in the small town of Paloh in Johor, was a bright student and a gifted athlete. He won a government scholarship to study at the prestigious Royal Military College and later another state grant to pursue a degree in medical technology and biochemistry in the California State University in Sacramento. He returned to Malaysia in 1987 and took up a military posting where he advanced to the rank of captain. Four years later, he left the military to set up a private laboratory analysis company which secured a lucrative flow of medical-testing contracts from the government. Yazid's radicalisation began in mid-1995 when he took a more serious view of religion and began spending a lot of time with several Indonesian clerics, among them Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged leader of JI, and Riduan 'Hambali' Isamuddin, the master strategist of the group, who was captured and is now in US custody. Yazid's offer to allow the two Al-Qaeda operatives to use his apartment in early 2000 put him under surveillance of the Malaysian Special Branch, and he remained under close police scrutiny until he left for Pakistan in June 2001, ostensibly to pursue a course in clinical laboratory work. But he abandoned his study plans as soon as he arrived in Karachi. When the United States declared that it would attack the Taleban and Al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the Sept 11 terror strikes, Yazid slipped into that country and served in a Taleban medical unit. He was ordered back to Malaysia by the Al-Qaeda high command in November 2001 and was caught a month later by the Malaysian authorities when he tried to re-enter the country from Thailand. He was detained under the country's Internal Security Act, which allows for detention without trial, until his release last month. He could not be reached for comment. The threat posed by the regional terror group, meanwhile, has been largely decimated with many of its leaders arrested or killed, though a few remain on the run. LESLIE LOPEZ
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