DHAKA: The Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria has ramped up its activities in southeast Asia so effectively that there is now an entire military unit of terrorists recruited from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, according to Singapore’s Prime Minister.
‘South-east Asia is a key recruitment centre for IS,’ Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Friday.
He noted that this included more than 500 Indonesians and dozens of Malaysians.
‘ISIS has so many Indonesian and Malaysia fighters that they form a unit by themselves - the Katibah Nusantara (Malay Archipelago Combat Unit),’ he added, The Straits Times publishes this report on Monday.
Even in Singapore, ‘a few’ young men have gone to Syria to join the IS ranks, and even more were intercepted trying to leave, PM Lee disclosed.
The Singapore authorities had recently arrested two students, one 17 and one 19, the latter of whom had planned to assassinate Singaporean leaders if he was unable to reach the Middle East.
‘This is why Singapore takes terrorism, and in particular ISIS, very seriously,’ Lee said.
‘The threat is no longer over there, it is over here.’
Lee revealed that IS has posted a propaganda and recruitment video showing Malay-speaking children training with weapons inside territory controlled by the terror group, and that two Malaysians were identified in a separate video carrying out the beheading of a Syrian man.
Lee also said that the Malaysian police have arrested several people who were planning to go to Syria to join the terrorist group, including some members of the Malaysian armed forces.
Some were planning attacks inside Malaysia.
Meanwhile, several extremist groups in South-east Asia have pledged allegiance to IS, including Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiah, whose leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, announced his allegiance from his prison cell last year.
IS has said that it intends to establish a province of its ‘caliphate’ in southeast Asia. Lee said the idea was a ‘grandiose, pie-in-the-sky dream’.
BDST: 1334 HRS, JUN 01, 2015
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