May 24, 2024
SINGAPORE – Dilapidated houses with broken windows, a run-down badminton court, an abandoned car with four flat tyres and a sign warning trespassers to keep out are grim remnants of a former terrorist compound in Kampung Sungai Tiram in the Malaysian state of Johor.
For the better part of the last decade, residents of this village, just 20km to the north-east of state capital Johor Bahru, have gone about their daily lives in peace, putting memories of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militant group behind them.
But an attack nearby last week, in which two policemen were killed, has revived their old fears.
At 2.45am on May 17, the 21-year-old son of a former JI member entered the Ulu Tiram police station and killed an officer with a parang.
He grabbed the victim’s sidearm and opened fire on two other police officers, killing one and injuring the other.
The injured officer then shot dead the assailant.
“I thought all these (terror attacks) were over. When I found out about the killings, I was shocked and terrified,” a 30-year-old civil servant, who wanted to be known only as Ms Amal, told The Straits Times.
Her house is about 600m from the entrance to the former terrorist commune. Fearing for her safety, Ms Amal spoke to ST from behind her closed front door.
The compound, which sits on a plot of about 2ha surrounded by oil palm trees, is secluded and accessible only via a narrow road.
The cluster of 10 or so houses once sheltered Asia’s most wanted terrorist – JI bomb-maker Noordin Mohamad Top – and others, who were instrumental in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and injured 209.
JI carried out other attacks, including the 2003 JW Marriott bombing in Jakarta, the 2004 Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta, the 2005 Bali bombings and the 2009 Jakarta bombings.
Its final terror strike took place on Sept 16, 2014, with the bombing of the Rizal Park Monument in the Philippines, which killed one person and injured seven others.
The movement was officially founded by Indonesians Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sungkar in Malaysia in 1993.
The duo were hiding in the country to escape being hunted down by then President Suharto’s government.
They opened the now defunct Luqmanul Hakim religious school in the compound, where it was believed they received funds for their terror activities through the students and their parents before the school’s closure by the Malaysian government in 2001.
The school, or madrasah, doubled as a meeting place for the group’s operatives, including Singapore JI leaders Mas Selamat Kastari and Ibrahim Maidin.
Mas Selamat fled to the commune after he escaped from a detention centre in Singapore in 2008, sparking a nationwide manhunt. He is currently detained in Singapore under the Internal Security Act.
One of the masterminds of the 2002 Bali bombings, Riduan Isamuddin, known as Hambali, was believed to have met his wife, Noralwizah Lee Abdullah, at the same madrasah. He is currently detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Noordin, who was a JI strategist and taught at the madrasah, was killed in an Indonesian police raid in September 2009.
Village head Muhamad Mohmed Som, a Kampung Sungai Tiram native, said the JI members largely kept to themselves and did not cause any trouble. He noted that they remained anonymous even as they shopped for groceries in a small place of roughly 7,000 people.
“Who would want to cause trouble in the same place that they live in? We knew that they were JI only after the bombings and when the police subsequently raided the compound,” he said, referring to the Bali bombings of 2002.
“This new attack is definitely shocking. We thought they had become peaceful,” said Mr Muhamad, 65, a retired army corporal.
Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution has called last week’s attack an isolated “lone wolf” incident, and said the assailant, who has not been identified, was not linked to JI, despite the authorities originally believing that he was.
Five members of his family are still in police custody.
When ST visited the commune on May 19, there were a handful of police vehicles and a troop of personnel still conducting investigations.
While there are still people living there, no resident was visible on the grounds.
An officer armed with a sub-machine gun guarded the area, with plain-clothes officers milling about, while a balaclava-clad officer warned ST journalists not to return under the threat of arrest.
JI, which is affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the US, is outlawed in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The Indonesian authorities will arrest any member of the group, even though they have not participated in any terror activities, while the Malaysian authorities continue to monitor former members and ex-detainees.
“I was told by my police officer friend that the police have always monitored that compound. The group have gone through re-education, and the authorities would visit them a few times a year – at least twice a year,” said retired army corporal Shaharin Dakeron.
“That community never mingled with us and kept to themselves. I think their children are home-schooled,” said the 76-year-old villager.
He noted that even at the height of JI’s terrorist activities from 2002 to 2014, the group had never caused any trouble to the locals.
Nevertheless, the May 17 attack at the Ulu Tiram police station has created ripples that have spread beyond Malaysia’s shores.
On May 20, the Johor Islamic Religious Council said the remains of the killer had to be buried away from the graves of civilians as a sign of condemnation.
The state religious authority is considering demolishing the abandoned Luqmanul Hakim religious school, even though it is no longer in operation.
Meanwhile, Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said on May 21 that the attack on the three Malaysian policemen is a grim reminder that the threat of terrorism remains high.
In a Facebook post, he told Singaporeans to be vigilant against such extremist ideology finding resonance in the country, as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has been used by global terrorist elements to “peddle their radical rhetoric and incite calls for violence”.
Singapore has also tightened its security measures, including at checkpoints, following the attack.
Mr Andrin Raj, a director with the Nordic Counter Terrorism Network, told ST previously that JI has always been a serious concern in the region, and its threat has never been fully neutralised.
“Islamist groups and jihadists have seen the region to be a ‘safe haven’ for establishing a regional caliphate. The threat of terrorism in Malaysia is not a resurgence. The rise of radicalism in Malaysia has been ongoing for decades,” he said.