Singaporean fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari has been nabbed in southern Malaysia, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.
The 48-year-old fugitive, one of the most wanted terrorists in southeast Asia, could barely put up a fight in his shorts and T-shirt when caught during a dawn raid, The Star said.
Mas Selamat escaped from Singapore's maximum security Whitley Detention Center in February last year. The newspaper said he had been living had been living the life of a simple villager without arousing the suspicions of villagers in Johor.
Malaysian Home Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein and Police Inspector-General Musa Hassan Friday confirmed Mas Selamat's arrest and detention under Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA).
Mas Selamat was planning something and that led to his arrest, Hishammuddin told reporters at Putrajaya, administrative center of the Malaysian Federal Government.
Hishammuddin said Malaysian police were working with Singaporean and Indonesian authorities on the investigations, and declined to say when exactly the fugitive was nabbed.
Musa said the arrest was made possible as police in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia had been sharing intelligence reports over the past year.
Malaysian police were still investigating his activities and networking, Musa added.
Malaysian special police officers reportedly had been working on various leads to confirm his whereabouts since March and planned the dawn raid that resulted in his arrest.
The head of the militant group Jemaah Islamiah (JI)'s branch inSingapore was caught in April this year when he was sound asleep in a secluded kampung house in Skudai, Johor State which bordering Singapoer, The Star said.
Malaysia's national news services Bernama reported that Mas Selamat was arrested was still in police custody and had not been sent to the Kamunting Detention Center in Taiping, Perak where Malaysia's ISA detainees are held.
The radical JI movement with key figures such as religious scholar Abu Bakar Basyir and Hambali was linked to Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, The Star said.
Abu Bakar was jailed and then freed had denied any involvement in terrorist activities, while Hambali is still being detained at the Guatanamo Bay, it said.
The movement is aimed to set up a Pan Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines, and was said to have carried out several bombings in Jakarta, Bali and Manila, the paper said.
Source: Xinhua
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