The director of Indonesia’s anti-terrorism agency has claimed that thousands of foreign operatives from the fundamentalist Islamic State (ISIS) terror movement are being deployed into Indonesia, with Malaysia as their point of transit.
Speaking to ABC Australia correspondent Samantha Hawley, Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Terorisme director Saud Usman Nasution said ISIS was working with human trafficking networks to bring in foreign terror agents through Malaysia.
Saud claimed that ISIS fighters would enter Sumatra through Malaysia, before being transported to Poso in Sulawesi, suspected of being a training ground for terror operatives in the region.
“First they leave Malaysia and head for Pekanbaru (Sumartra) to Puncak (west Java) — it’s all facilitated by asylum seeker networks, then from Puncak they would leave to Makassar and Poso, with facilitation from ISIS network,” he said.
“So we need to stay vigilant, more so because there is information that in Malaysia there are thousands, a lot of foreign terrorist fighters there who are about to be deployed — we don’t know where to — under the ISIS network.”
Saud’s statements comes days after Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi announced that relations between the two neighbouring countries remained cordial and mutually beneficial, claiming that problem-solving between Malaysia and Indonesia was conducted through not only formal channels, but via fraternal informal ties as well.
