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Malaysia watches militants within©Associated PressDecember 7, 2001 KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- As Malaysia intensifies its inquiry into links between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and its own Islamic militants, attention is focusing on a previously unknown group accused of plotting two attacks to kill U.S. sailors. Members of the tiny Malaysian Mujahadin Group, or KMM, trained in Afghanistan, followed the calls of bin Laden to target American servicemen and hoped to establish an Islamic state in Southeast Asia, authorities say. Malaysia appears to have been an unwitting way-station for terrorists, including at least one Sept. 11 suicide hijacker. Khalid al-Mihdhar passed through Kuala Lumpur's airport in January 2000. From the moment the future suicide hijacker stepped off the plane, he and several others were under surveillance by Malaysia's Special Branch police. Information from the surveillance was eventually shared with U.S. authorities, and the meeting took on new significance when one of the participants, an unidentified al-Qaida operative from the Middle East, became wanted in connection with the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. The CIA placed al-Mihdhar and one of his associates, Nawaf Alhazmi, on a terrorist watch list in August, but immigration officials discovered the two soon-to-be-hijackers were already in the United States, U.S. officials have said. The two were on the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon. Recently, authorities in Malaysia have begun to crack down on the KMM. Though the group has not been linked to the January 2000 meeting with al-Mihdhar, the government alleges that members follow bin Laden's call for holy war. One attack on U.S. sailors, planned in a shopping district in downtown Kuala Lumpur, apparently was called off in 1999 because the would-be assassins grew nervous about security in the area, officials said. Then last year, officials said, militants trailed a carload of U.S. sailors on an expressway but aborted the attack, apparently believing the servicemen were armed.
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