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| Southeast Asia |
| Key separatists met in Malaysia before attack |
| 2004-01-10 |
| Key southern separatists met in a border area in Malaysia’s Kedah state opposite Yala’s Betong district before launching coordinated attacks in Narathiwat on Sunday, security sources said yesterday. Leading members of the mainstream Pattani United Liberation Organisation (Pulo), including Marzo Tar-yeh and Ruzdi Pao-zeng, and several members of other splinter separatist groups met at Ban Su-ngai Pattani, about 20km from the Thai-Malaysian border. Betong is known to be under Marzo Tar-yeh’s influence. Local security sources strongly believe his men were directly involved in Wednesday’s armed attack on the Ayer Weng police station. The government’s new security adviser, former Fourth Army commander Gen Kitti Rattanachaya, also believes local separatists have received support from the Kampulan Mujahideen Malaysia (KMM), a Malaysia-based Islamic militant group known to have ties with the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyaah (JI). "Leading separatists from several splinter groups had joined forces under the umbrella of Bersatu in the coordinated attacks on Sunday," one security source said. Bersatu is an outlawed separatist organisation born out of the merger of insurgent groups such as the BRN (Barisa Revolusi Nasional), GMIP (Gerakan Mujahideen Islam Patani) and Pulo. The source said Bersatu had between 10-20 core leaders and was known to give southern Muslim youths guerrilla warefare training. It was an ``open secret’’ that several leading separatists were taking refuge in Malaysia’s border areas with protection from local Islamic religious leaders. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |