US investigators now believe the September 11 terror attacks were planned in part by al-Qaeda operatives in Malaysia. It has emerged that one of the two dozen alleged Muslim extremists detained in Malaysia, provided US$35,000 in Kuala Lumpur in the spring of 2000 to French-born Zacarias Moussaoui, the first man charged in the US for conspiring with the September 11 hijackers. A US-educated biochemist and retired Malaysian army captain, Yazid Sufaat, is also said to have met in January 2000 with two of the hijackers, Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, who stayed in his home outside Kuala Lumpur. He was arrested on December 9 as he returned to Malaysia from Afghanistan.

Along with arrests in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines over the past two months, the revelations concerning Sufaat indicate that an extensive al-Qaeda-linked Islamic terror network in South East Asia has existed for some time.

In seeking the locus of the network, it seems all roads lead to the Jemaah Islamiah, a regional organisation whose goal is to create an Islamic state encompassing southern Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the southern Philippines. Singaporean and Malaysian security officials are convinced the group’s leader is 63-year old Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, described as a South-East Asian Osama bin Laden.

Under questioning for six hours at Jakarta National Police Headquarters on January 24, Abu Bakar apparently denied any links to al-Qaeda or to terrorism, and Indonesian police rather too generously allowed him to return to his Central Java base. However, upon his release he issued a statement saying, "I am not a member of al-Qaeda. However, I really praise the fight of Osama bin Laden, who has dared to represent the Islamic world to combat the arrogance of the United States and its allies." For good measure, he added that Bin Laden is "a true Muslim fighter", while the US is "the real terrorist".

Abu Bakar is currently known in Indonesia as the head of the Indonesian Mujahideen Council (MMI), which was founded in 2000 to push for the adoption of strict Islamic sharia law in Indonesia, but it turns out he has a long track record of radical Islamic activism. In 1971, Abu Bakar and a collaborator, Abdullah Sungkar (who died in 1999), co-founded a puritanical Islamic boarding school near Solo (Central Java) that still exists and is still run by Abu Bakar. From 1978 to 1982 they were jailed by Suharto for trying to start an Islamic militia called Komando Jihad. Soon after their release, they were convicted again for subversive activity but they hastily fled to exile in Malaysia until after Suharto’s downfall in 1998. While in Malaysia, it appears the two men quietly gathered around them Indonesians, Malaysians, Filipinos and Singaporeans who shared their vision for a regional pan-Islamic state and so began the Jemaah Islamiah, which Abu Bakar now describes benignly as "only a Koran reading group".

As the interrogations continue, authorities are now on the lookout for Indonesian-born and itinerant radical Muslim preacher Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali. Like Abu Bakar, he fled to Malaysia in the mid-1980s and then went on to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet forces. Upon returning to Malaysia in 1990, he began preaching at radical mosques, met Abu Bakar and later became the operations chief of Jemaah Islamiah.

Detainees being held by Singaporean authorities have revealed that it was Hambali that was heading the foiled JI/al-Qaeda plan to drive truck bombs into the US, Australian, British and Israeli embassies in Singapore. Hambali got his confrere Yazid Sufaat to purchase four tons of ammonium nitrate (for the trucks) in October 2000 and had them delivered to Malaysia, then shipped to an Indonesian island just off Singapore, in preparation for the attack. Some of the detainees have been found to belong to another JI cell controlled by Hambali, which was planning to bomb US warships docking in Singapore, a shuttle bus carrying US military personnel, and offices of American corporations. An incriminating videotape showing how the shuttle bus would be attacked was found by CIA officers in the wreckage of an al-Qaeda leader’s house in Afghanistan.

The current whereabouts of Hambali remains an unanswered question. Singaporean and Malaysian investigators have been told by the JI detainees that he went to Afghanistan in October, although he is now thought to be in hiding in Indonesia, now seen as the weakest link in the regional effort to uncover al-Qaeda activists. Disturbingly, the four tons of ammonium nitrate has also not been accounted for.

The Singapore and Malaysia arrests have also provided tangible dividends, however. On January 15, a joint operation by Philippines national police, the armed forces and immigration authorities nabbed a 30-year-old Indonesian named Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, just three hours before he was to board a plane from Manila to Bangkok (Thailand has gained a reputation as a safe heaven for fugitives and organised crime). The authorities then rounded up four alleged Filipino accomplices and seized a ton of TNT, 17 M-16 rifles, 300 detonators and other bomb-making equipment from a house rented under al-Ghozi’s name in General Santos City, Mindanao.

It has since been revealed that the enigmatic al-Ghozi was a student at Abu Bakar’s Islamic boarding school in the late 1980s. Lately, it appears he has been making mischief all over the region: going to Singapore in October to help JI members prepare for the truck bombings; posing as "Randy Ali" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front special operations group; and according to one of his four accomplices, masterminding the December 2000 bombing at a Manila light rail station that killed 22 people. Not surprisingly, he is also being investigated for involvement in bombings in Indonesia over the past 18 months.

Underlining the vulnerability of South East Asia as a future rallying point for dispersed al-Qaeda personnel, on February 17 the Manila Standard reported that Philippines Immigration authorities were put on triple red alert following intelligence reports that 17 bodyguards of Osama bin Laden were planning to enter the Philippines to attack US targets.

Over the previous few days, news spread that the terrorists, mostly Yemeni and Saudi nationals, may have landed on the southern island of Basilan, and that even Bin Laden himself could follow suit. He is said to have visited the Philippines a few times and is believed to have a Filipino wife. Mounting evidence suggests that the rebel group Abu Sayyaf has well developed ties with al-Qaeda.

Interestingly, the reports coincided with the entry of US military personnel into Basilan, the Abu Sayyaf stronghold, as part of annual joint military exercises with the Philippines Armed Forces. Although they are officially engaged only as military advisers, the Americans are armed and have authority to fight back if attacked. The prospect of an encounter with al-Qaeda fugitives presents an intriguing scenario.