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| Southeast Asia |
| Time discovers Thai hard boyz are in league with JI. Wotta surprise. |
| 2005-05-03 |
| On March 9, Malaysian security forces arrested five armed Thai Muslim militants at Kuala Lumpur's Sentral Station, sparking concerns that the insurgency in southern Thailand was threatening to spill over into neighboring Malaysia, potentially including terror attacks in Malaysian cities. But TIME has now learned that the men were in the country to collect a cache of arms hidden by Jemaah Islamiah (J.I.), the al-Qaeda-linked militant network widely blamed for the Oct. 2002 Bali bombings. The connection raises its own set of concerns. In particular, analysts say, ties between Thailand and a wider Muslim militancy might signal a new escalation of violence in the south, where more than 600 people have died since the insurgency began in early 2004. Malaysian police have consistently refused to confirm the arrests publicly, and the head of the force's criminal investigation department, Fauzi Shaari, did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking an interview on the issue. But Malaysian security sources and a regional intelligence official have told TIME that the five separatists—who are still under interrogation in Malaysia—were forced to retrieve the arms because intensified security in the Thai south had made it hard to source weapons at home. The revelation that the militants were seeking to pick up arms left behind by Jemaah Islamiah is "consistent with what we know from depositions of arrested J.I. members," says Sidney Jones of the International Crisis Group, who has studied the network intensively. "They were running arms out of southern Thailand, through Malaysia and into Indonesia in 2000 in cooperation with the Thai [insurgents]." But Jones cautions that these past links don't necessarily mean that J.I. is forging new bonds with the Thai separatists. "It's possible, of course," she says, "but we need more information before we can make a definite judgment." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |