Authorities in Singapore arrested a suspected Muslim terror group member who once trained with militants in Afghanistan, the government said.
Rijal Yadri Jumari, a 27-year-old Singaporean, was arrested last month for suspected involvement with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Home Affairs Ministry said on Sunday in a statement posted on its Web site.
The group is a loose network of Muslim militants in Southeast Asia.
Rijal's arrest was announced amid a nationwide manhunt for a top Muslim terror suspect who escaped a high-security Singapore prison nearly a month ago.
In Pakistan, Rijal joined JI's Al-Ghuraba cell, the ministry said. It did not say when.
"He was one of several students talent-spotted by the JI to be groomed to become a future leader in the JI organization," the statement said.
It said Rijal was sent to Afghanistan for terrorist training at an al-Qaeda camp in Kandahar in 2000.
While there he was trained in weapons handling, explosives, surveillance and guerrilla warfare -- and he allegedly met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a number of times, the statement said.
Rijal later went into hiding to evade Singapore authorities, the ministry said.
He was arrested with the help of "regional authorities" after Singapore's Internal Security Department discovered his whereabouts, the statement said. It did not say where he was arrested or give other details.
At the time of his arrest, Rijal was suspected of working with foreign JI operatives to discuss regrouping and reviving the network, the statement said.
He was arrested last month and detained on Thursday under the Internal Security Act, which allows for indefinite detention without trial.
The ministry also said that it released Anis Mohamad Mansor, another suspected Jemaah Islamiyah member detained in 2004.
"He had cooperated in investigations and had responded positively to rehabilitation, including religious counseling," it said.
Singapore was named an al-Qaeda target by alleged operative Khalid Sheikh Mohamed during a tribunal last year at the US military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Last month, the suspected local commander of the JI network, Mas Selamat Kastari -- suspected of once plotting to crash an airplane into Singapore's international airport -- slipped away from a detention facility.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver