A SPECIAL team led by Bukit Aman’s Special Branch Counter-Terrorism Division (SBCT-D) swooped down on a target area in the Masjid India area here yesterday, tearing down doors to yank out possible foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) in hiding.
As investigators took custody of those arrested, working overnight to determine the real reason for their illicit presence here, they were certain that among the 400 foreigners picked up, they could, in fact, be those they had been hunting.
These hunted men were among those who had assimilated themselves among foreigners in the country after successfully making their way here following deportation from Turkey.
Turkish authorities had red-flagged them at their immigration lines and prevented them from going to Syria as their intelligence showed that these men were planning on joining the Islamic State.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had said on Aug 1 in Parliament that efforts were being made to trace at least 16 of them.
The Home Ministry had said “the militants” had been deported to Malaysia without procedures being observed as the country’s authorities were not given a heads-up.
The 200-strong raiding party, comprising teams from the police’s General Operations Force, Traffic division, as well as the Federal Reserve, Forensics, K9 unit, Special Action (UTK) and Bomb Disposal units began, their operations at noon. They went straight for a condominium behind the Dang Wangi district police headquarters.
They began from the topmost 42nd floor, knocking on every unit. Each time they were forced to break down a door, they would find several undocumented foreigners hoping to be missed out.
The UTK, which were in the frontline of the raid dubbed Op Joker, also did not miss several “suspects” who, upon seeing the raiding party, were inching away from the scene.
The Atomic Energy Licensing Board, Immigration and National Registration Departments, as well as the Civil Defence Force (APM), were also involved.
Within an hour of the raid, the team reeled in a Pakistani man, believed to be part of a syndicate that forged travel documents. They found on him RM40,000, foreign currencies, 62 passports of various countries and a machine used to forge the Immigration Department’s “stickers”.
He is being investigated under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act 2012 (Sosma).
Bangladeshis made up the bulk of those arrested yesterday (144), followed by those from India (55) and Pakistan (31).
Yesterday’s raid was the first of more to come as Bukit Aman had listed out several hotspots that would be raided.
The , during the operation, also scanned the raided units with personal radiation devices to detect the presence of radioactive elements.
SBCT-D principal assistant director Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, who led the team, later said about half of the men picked up were released while the rest would have to wait until his office completed checking their details against intelligence that the police had received from Interpol.
“We are still in the midst of screening each detainee,” he said, adding that the ones released were those whose employers came forward with their valid papers and thus were crossed out as terror suspects.
Ayob said the operation was carried out as part of efforts to track down FTFs believed to have slipped into the country, and Malaysian IS militants who have returned.
The New Straits Times reported in May that Malaysia had been made the unwitting receiver of foreign fighters who were stopped from entering Syria to fight alongside IS.
Intelligence suggested that there were no less than 30 individuals, including those flagged as “high risk”, who were stopped in their tracks for their “potential risk to national security”.
They were then deported here after naming Malaysia their destination of choice, a practice by these nations that Kuala Lumpur had protested, as it was against the standard international protocol.
It is understood that Malaysia would be their destination of choice as it offered visa-free travel to a host of nations.
Ayob also said the police would also be using the personal radiation scanning devices during the upcoming Kuala Lumpur Sea Games. The devices were on loan from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency.