Yazid Sufaat: From bright student to key JI operative
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.
KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIA said on Wednesday it had released suspected terrorist Yazid Sufaat, detained since 2001 after being connected with the Sept 11 attacks in the United States, as he is now 'safe'.
Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Yazid, a member of regional militant group Jemaah Islamiyah who was freed from a detention camp in northern Malaysia on Nov 24, was now safe to be released into society.
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.
He was considered as a threat to public security in Malaysia because he was part of Jemaah Islamiyah, trying to establish an Islamic government within the region,' he told reporters.
'I think after holding him for so long, he can be brought back into society but at the same time we will follow closely everyone that may have ideology of militancy or extremism.
'We won't hold any person longer than necessary.'
Syed Hamid did not say whether Yazid, whose extradition had been sought by the United States after his detention, was under any restriction order that would oblige him to report to police.
A home ministry official told AFP that Yazid was released on Nov 24. The minister said five other Malaysian and two Thai separatist suspects were freed in December after being held without trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
Some of the seven released suspects had been held since 2002. Security detainees undergo intensive counseling in a special prison and the government has said they are only released if authorities are convinced that they have been 'rehabilitated.'
Human rights activist Nalini Elumalai said the three alleged Jemaah Islamiyah members, including Yazid, were released on the condition that they remain within their home districts and report regularly to police.
Details about the other four and their alleged wrongdoing were not immediately available, although two were accused of links to violence in neighboring Thailand's southern most provinces, whichhave been terrorised by regular attacks since early 2004.
Yazid, a US-trained biochemist, was arrested in late 2001 when he returned home from Afghanistan, where he was suspected of working on a biological and chemical weapons program.
He has also been accused of giving a false letter of employment to Zacarias Moussaoui - the only person charged and convicted in the United States for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - that helped Moussaoui enter the United States.
Security officials have said that Yazid described the program he was developing for Al-Qaeda as being in the 'conceptual stages' when their plans were interrupted by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Officials have said Yazid was not at the meetings said to have taken place at his apartment, and that the Sept 11 attacks were not discussed there, but that during informal chats, the future hijackers told their hosts that Southeast Asian militants were obliged to kill Americans and destroy American interests.
Syed Hamid said that since he had been appointed home minister in March, the number of ISA detainees had been reduced to 46 from 70.
'From time to time the cases will be reviewed and, as they are reviewed, we will look at the file and if it's time to release them we will do that. We will not hold them any longer than necessary,' he said.
As well as suspected terrorists, the ISA has been used recently to detain government critics including the nation's top blogger, Raja Petra Kamarudin, who was freed in November under a landmark court ruling.
The Straits Times
singapore
10/12/08
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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