Singapore has revealed it has been holding two more suspected Islamic militants for months and has slapped tight restrictions on 12 others, as it continues "mopping up the outer ring" of al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah operatives in the city-state.
One of the men in custody is Hosnay bin Awi, father-in-law of suspected Jemaah Islamiyah bomb expert Fathur Al-Ghozi, the home affairs ministry said in a statement issued late on Wednesday.
Hosnay was arrested in November, weeks after the Philippine army killed Al-Ghozi, who was the focus of a three-month manhunt after he escaped from police.
The other man in custody, Alahuddeen bin Abdullah, an alleged member of the Philippines-based Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF, was arrested in October, 2002, the ministry said. The separatist rebel group is known to have hosted Jemaah Islamiyah training camps on the southern island of Mindanao.
The government did not say why it waited so long -- 15 months in Alahuddeen's case -- to announce it was holding the suspects.
Both were believed to have been involved in plots to attack western targets in Singapore, the ministry said.
"The inner core has been broken and disrupted," Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said following the announcement. "However, it would be naive of us to believe that we are out of the woods."
Both Singapore nationals were being held under the Internal Security Act which allows indefinite detention with annual nonjudicial reviews.
It said a dozen others -- 10 alleged members of Jemaah Islamiyah and two suspected MILF members -- had been interrogated and released on orders restricting their movements and actions.
Singaporean authorities have reached the stage where they are "mopping up of the outer ring of these [terror] networks," Wong said.
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