Navy reels over terror arrest

KUALA LUMPUR: The Royal Malay­sian Navy is still grappling with the news that one of its own has been arrested for being part of a militant group.

“He had an impeccable record since joining us 10 years ago.

“He was friendly,” said navy chief Admiral Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Jaafar.

“The navy is a very close-knit group and we thought we knew him.

“We never expected him to be a part of something like this,” he said after opening the fifth Rimland Pacific Superintendents’ Conference here yesterday.

Further checks into the 31-year-old sailor, who served as a mechanical engineer, showed that he had other secrets that they did not know of.

“We thought he was a bachelor but following investigations, we found out that he married a Malaysian woman in April,” Admiral Abdul Aziz said.

The sailor, with a rank of leading hand, the equivalent of a corporal in the army, was among three men arrested in Sabah on Friday for being part of a militant group that planned to undertake suicide bombings and attack missions in Syria and Iraq.

They are linked to rebel groups called the Islamic State of Iraq and Sham in the Middle East and the notorious al-Qaeda-linked Abu Say­yaf in the southern Philippines.

“We believe that he was harbouring two main players in the militant group in a house.

“I am disappointed that we failed to identify him.

“I have ordered for an internal investigation to see what went wrong,” said Admiral Abdul Aziz.