AMMAN: The Royal Malaysia Police have foiled 14 attempts by the Daesh militant group to stage attacks in Malaysia, it was revealed here.
Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay, principal assistant director of the Counter Terrorism Division of the Special Branch in Bukit Aman, said the public only knew of the Daesh militant attack on an entertainment centre in Puchong, Selangor, on June 28.
However, the many other attempts of the group were foiled by the police, he said.
“Many did not believe that the Daesh threat is clear and present. I have been talking about Daesh since 2013 but only after the bombing in Puchong did they believe it,” he said in a working paper on ‘The Crisis of ISIS Ideology: Impact, Influence and Approaches by Malaysian Authorities’ during a seminar on countering extremism at the University of Jordan here recently.
Ayob Khan did not elaborate on the attack attempts. He said Daesh made maximum use of the social media to recruit members and disseminate its ideology.
“It has thousands of cybertroopers … always countering what we propagate. The group has an online TV that operates round the clock. It has websites and Twitter accounts which have been blocked. From the middle of 2015 up to now, 360,000 accounts have been blocked,” he said.
The group also publishes an online magazine ‘DABIQ’, he said, adding that all these required the authorities to focus on the social media to counter.
“They also have five groups of hackers. A Kosovo national studying at a private institution of higher learning in Malaysia had hacked the website of a company, stolen the personal details of United States soldiers and passed them to Daesh.
“We arrested him and extradited him to the United States and he has been tried and sentenced to 20 years in prison,” he said.
Ayob Khan said the Daesh militant group disseminated its ideology in 23 languages.
He also said that there were 27 Malaysian men, 12 women, nine boys and eight girls with the Daesh in Syria. Twenty-seven Malaysians had died in Syria and eight had returned to Malaysia.
Ayob Khan said the police would not compromise on militant activities and would continue to conduct operations against individuals, groups or NGOs, and those who cross the security line would be arrested regardless of their background.
“We have arrested 260 people from various countries for involvement in militant groups, four of them in 2013, fifty-nine in 2014, eighty-two in 2015 and 115 in 2016.
“Among the Malaysians arrested for involvement in the Daesh militant group, 14 are soldiers, four of them commandos. Three policemen were also arrested. Others arrested include imams, university lecturers and government servants, one of them with the title ‘Datuk’,” he said. — Bernama