With Malaysians in Syria joining the so-called Islamic State jihad, the Home Ministry is going all out to counter extremist ideology, including hosting the International Conference on De-Radicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism last week.
WHEN Special Branch director Comm Datuk Seri Mohamad Fuzi Harun was asked at a recent conference how many police and other personnel are deployed to monitor each militant after rehabilitation and release back into society, his answer was blunt.
“We monitor not only the target but the family members. I can’t reveal to you police matters about how many police officers or personnel are involved. I think that is not your business. That is our business!” he said.
He went on to say that “almost all” of the former militant detainees – whether from Islamic State (IS), Darul Islam, Kumpulan Mujahidin Malaysia, Jemaah Islamiyah or al-Qaeda – are still on the police radar, being monitored after their release.
“The human rights people will attack us and ask ‘Why do you still continue to monitor these people?’ From our point of view, they still pose a security threat to us. So we will monitor, and not just the former detainees but their family members too,” he said at last week’s International Conference on De-Radicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism.
Comm Mohamad Fuzi cited teacher Mohd Nazri Dollah (of Darul Islam) from Sabah as an example of a militant released after being rehabilitated “because he was thought to be okay”. But the police kept an eye on him.
“He continued his militant activities, recruiting students and other people. So we had to take him back into custody and put him through extra rehabilitation programmes,” he said.
Despite such setbacks, Comm Mohamad Fuzi said the number of relapse cases among former militants and extremists is negligible. Of the 240 militants rehabilitated between 2001 and 2011, only 13 – or 5% – returned to their old ways. This means the rehabilitation programme has a 95% success rate.
“If you go for an exam and get 95%, that’s an A+ already!” he said with pride.
However, he said, this is still not enough, as their target is a 100% success rate.
Comm Mohamad Fuzi pointed out that when the Internal Security Act was repealed in September 2012, dealing with militants became a “major challenge” for the police.
“The rise of IS was rapid and had to be countered instantly by way of criminal law which required hard evidence to secure convictions. But we were battling an ideological war where evidence was not readily visible.”
So it was necessary for new strategies and new laws to be put in place to tackle these threats.
As of today, 157 suspects including foreigners have been apprehended under the new Security Offences (Special Measures) Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, he said.
Then he laid out some hard facts: 72 Malaysians have been positively identified as having enlisted with terrorist groups in Syria; currently, there are 57 Malaysians fighting in Syria; and, despite arrests, prosecution and public awareness campaigns carried out here about the dangers of IS, there are still Malaysians intent on heading to Syria to join the fight.
So other than rehabilitating militants, the police are also working with multiple agencies – including religious departments, universities and religious institutions – to engage with and build resilience within communities thought to be vulnerable to extremist propaganda.
“Never before has the police been so active in pursuing these measures. Community engagement is vital. People must be given awareness, understanding and reminders of the dangers promoted by IS. We must expose IS-manufactured distortions and make clear the legal repercussions against those affiliated with IS so that the public are not hoodwinked by IS rhetoric and propaganda,” he said.
Such community engagement reaps other benefits too. He said the police receive information about individuals intending to travel to Syria or those being influenced by IS ideology, so preventive measures can be taken.
Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based terrorism expert, said in Indonesia, of the 200 or so people who were stopped or deported on their way to join IS, more than half were women and children under 15.
For Jones, it is “critically important” to have in-depth interviews with these women to understand why they wanted to join IS, who facilitated their departure and what they planned to do.
“Understanding the motivation of these women is particularly important because in several cases, it is the women who have driven their families to do it,” said Jones, who is the director of the Jakarta-based regional Institute of Policy Analysis of Conflict organisation.
Jones also said the prisons where the terrorists were held must be better managed, adding that Indonesian prisons are “notoriously corrupt” and prison officials have been known to have turned a blind eye when terrorist inmates used smartphones to download radical material and communicated these to their followers on the outside.
Interestingly, she said, the police in Indonesia have used Ali Imron, one of the Bali bombers (of the 2002 incident), as part of their strategies to rehabilitate others. Ali is serving a life sentence in prison and now helps the police by working with suspects and new terrorist convicts in prison to persuade them of the flaws in their ideological views.
“He has both the jihadist and religious credentials needed to give him credibility and a few prisoners who have been released have credited him with having turned them around,” she said in her presentation at the conference.
Jones also said the amount of pro-IS propaganda circulating on social media is “staggering”, adding that banning radical websites or shutting down Twitter and Facebook accounts might not be effective as IS followers set up new ones almost immediately.
For countries like Japan, the experience has been different.
Ambassador-in-Charge of Countering Terrorism and Organised Crime for Japan, Tsukasa Kawada, said most Japanese had little contact with the Muslim community previously but when two Japanese were taken hostage in Syria by IS last year, many Muslims appealed for their release and prayed for their safe return.
Even though this did not happen (the two Japanese were beheaded), he said there had been an increase in the number of Japanese visiting mosques to further understand true Islam, and its customs and habits to erase the ideas distorted by IS extremists.
“We believe that these kinds of voluntary exchanges should be welcomed to create an inclusive society and contribute to the prevention of radicalisation,” he said.
Security Studies professor Rohan Gunaratna from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore was all praise for Malaysia for publishing the Home Ministry’s “Integrated Rehabilitation Module For Detainees” and handing it out to participants at the conference.
“No other country has shared their rehabilitation training manual at a conference like this. They may have done it privately but not at a conference. Malaysia has taken a huge step by doing this,” he said.
For him, Malaysia is safe today not just because the Special Branch’s counterterrorism division is doing a remarkable job but because the Prisons Department and Jakim (Department of Islamic Development) have collaborated and worked together for rehabilitation and community engagement.
“It is the best model I have seen in this region,” he said.
Prof Gunaratna pointed out that terrorist rehabilitation programmes failed in more than half the countries which had it for a variety of reasons. In Egypt, he said, it came to a halt when the authorities stopped paying the religious clerics visiting the prisons; Algeria and Libya failed because there was no proper reintegration programme; and in Yemen, it ended when the president stopped supporting it.
Prof Gunaratna added that although the programme in Indonesia is active, he thinks it is failing because it does not include comprehensive rehabilitation and there is no proper programme to monitor terrorists who have been released.
“Still, there is huge potential to restart the programme, especially after the recent Jakarta attacks. Malaysia and Indonesia should work together to strengthen and rebuild the Indonesian programme because whatever happens in Indonesia, the spillover effect will hit Malaysia as well as Singapore and the Philippines.”
Prof Gunaratna feels that South-East Asia is facing a sustained threat and, particularly for Malaysia, the threat of terrorism is imminent.
He pointed out that IS is now threatening to declare a satellite caliphate in South-East Asia and four groups of terrorists have already unified in Basilan, in southern Philippines. One of these groups, he said, is led by a Malaysian, and there are other Malaysians there too.
“If an IS state is declared in Basilan, it will not be confined to the Sulu archipelago. It will extend to Sabah because they want to claim the original territory of the Sulu sultanate. It will be a threat because IS will dictate how people in that province should live. They will do their IS beheading and killings and impose their IS curriculum.”
Malaysia, he noted, should work with the Philippines to thwart any such attempts.
“The counterterrorism division is going to need more resources. They need it now and quickly so that they can meet this challenge.”
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