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Malaysia’s Isis sympathisers draw focus after deadly Ulu Tiram attack
- Initial reports linked al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah to Friday’s ‘lone wolf’ attack on a Johor Bahru police station that killed two officers
- But extremism experts and former militants say young Southeast Asians ‘lurking in cyberspace’ prefer to join pro-Islamic State groups
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A deadly assault on a police station in Malaysia’s Johor state last week has highlighted the enduring dangers of violent extremism in a country that closely monitors militancy and has not experienced a major terror attack in over two decades.
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The 21-year-old attacker who killed two policemen in the Johor Bahru suburb of Ulu Tiram on Friday was shot dead at the scene. He was reportedly buried on Monday in an isolated grave as a mark of condemnation, in accordance with instructions from the state’s fatwa committee.
Ulu Tiram is a former stronghold of al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah (JI), the militant group behind the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, including at least 11 Hong Kong residents.
The Lukmanul Hakim Islamic boarding school, established by JI’s Indonesian founders Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, was located in Ulu Tiram before it was closed in the early 2000s. Its alumni included Indonesian terrorists Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, who were executed in 2008 for their role in the Bali bombings, as well as Malaysian bomb-maker Noordin Moch Top, who was killed by Indonesian counterterrorism forces in a 2009 raid.
Radicalised students from the school have since spread out across Southeast Asia, according to Benny Mamoto, a retired Indonesian police general who investigated the Bali bombings. Local media reported on Tuesday that authorities were considering demolishing the school building, with the head of the local religious affairs committee saying he had received complaints that it was still in operation, despite the building no longer being in use.
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