Malaysian police have crippled a terrorist network that helped Indonesian militants.

Bakri Omar, inspector general of police, said authorities arrested 12 men belonging to a group calling itself Darul Islam based in Malaysia’s eastern Sabah state on Borneo. Some reports state that ten of the twelve men are Indonesians, while others claim only two or three of them are Indonesian.

With these arrests, police have paralyzed Sabah’s Darul Islam underground militant network, which cooperated with Indonesian militants.

Bakri said.

The arrests were first reported by The Star newspaper on Tuesday, which described the crackdown as Malaysia’s biggest success against terrorism since the detention of dozens of alleged members of Kumpulan Militan Malaysia, or KMM, a homegrown Islamic extremist group, five years ago.

Bakri said 11 Darul Islam suspects were being held under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial. One Filipino initially detained was released after the arrests, which occurred between March 16 and April 3, Bakri said without elaborating.

During the arrests, police seized two automatic pistols and ammunition meant to be smuggled to Ambon, the capital of Indonesia’s Maluku province where a civil war between Muslims and Christians occurred a few years ago, as well as jihadist documents, Bakri said.

Darul Islam Sabah claims its objective is to establish a regional Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia and southern Philippines through militant activities, Bakri said, without elaborating on the size of the organization.

The role of Darul Islam Sabah was to help Indonesian militants transit to the southern Philippines, smuggle weapons from the southern Philippines to Indonesia and obtain militarytraining in the southern Philippines.

Bakri added.

Darul Islam helped seven Indonesian militant suspects - including Umar Patek and Dul Matin, who were believed to be involved in the 2002 bombings on Indonesia’s Bali island - slip between the southern Philippines and Indonesia between 2003 and March 2006, Bakri said. (**)

Meanwhile Antara reports that one of the Indonesian militants arrested in Malaysia was trained by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement in Afghanistan.

The Indonesian man was trained to handle arms and make bombs and is believed to have conducted similar training for other members of the extremist group in Indonesia and the southern Philippines. Intelligence sources were quoted as saying that the man was a major influence on the other members of Darul Islam.

Tags: Terrorism