JOHOR BARU: The attack on the Ulu Tiram police station, which killed two policemen and injured another, marks the latest incident to have rocked the nation.
This was also not the first time that Ulu Tiram here has been linked to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) activities.
In 2002, the government shut down a religious named Sekolah Tarbiyah Islamiyah Luqmanul Hakiem, which was built in a secluded spot of an oil palm plantation.
The authorities had then detained its 12 teachers, who were suspected to be linked to Kumpulan Militan Malaysia, the local offshoot of Indonesia-based JI.
The 155 students of the school were transferred to other institutions.
The school was started by JI leaders Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, when they fled Indonesia to Malaysia in the early 1990s.
Top local terror suspects Dr Azahari Hussin and Nordin Mat Top were also linked to the school.
Azahari was a former Universiti Teknologi Malaysia lecturer, who later became a JI bomb expert in Indonesia.
He died in November 2005, when Indonesian anti-terror operatives raided his hideout in Kota Batu, East Java.
Noordin is also a close associate of Azahari and is also an explosives expert. He also died when Indonesian police moved in on his hideout in September 2009 in Central Java.
Both militants were thought to have masterminded most of the bomb attacks by JI in Indonesia in the 2000s.
JI, which dedicated itself to the establishment of a caliphate in Southeast Asia, first gained notoriety when its members orchestrated the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people and left 209 injured.
The Indonesia-based group, which had cells in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, was also linked to 2003 J.W. Marriott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta, the 2005 Bali bombings and the 2009 J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotel bombings.
Meanwhile, checks by the New Straits Times at Kampung Sungai Tiram yesterday, which usually is a hive of activity, showed that it was eerily quiet.
Rocked by the police's swoop that netted 20 JI members from the village, residents had now shut themselves inside their homes.
Many refused to engage in conversation while those that did spoke in hushed tones.
As this NST reporter made her way to the home of the arrested JI member, a villager tried to block her way.
"This is private property. You are trespassing. Leave now," the villager warned.
As this reporter pressed on, she spoke to a Bangladeshi national, who pointed to a pondok (shed) behind the suspect's family home.
The pondok, he claimed, was recently used to conduct religious classes.
He also claimed that five to eight foreigners, including Indonesians, were attending classes there on Thursday nights.