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Sipah-e-Sahaba tried to establish offshoot in Japan
A member of an Islamist extremist group banned in Pakistan entered Japan two years ago to try to establish a foothold in the country, a Japanese newspaper said on Friday.Japanese police had warned this month that Islamist extremists may tempt Muslim communities in Japan to turn radical and attack Japan, whose government has been a staunch backer of the U.S.-led war on Iraq . In a report that underscores such concerns, police learned from an informant that a member of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), a Sunni extremist group outlawed in Pakistan, had entered Japan to start an SSP branch, the Sankei newspaper said. After checking immigration records, police found that a Pakistani man in his 30s had entered Japan in 2003 with a visa for religious activities and that he had told others while worshipping that he came to Japan to establish an SSP offshoot, the newspaper said. "We will step up efforts to grasp the actual conditions of the Islamic community in Japan that could be used improperly by terrorists," the paper quoted a police source as saying. Sankei said the man was detected both entering and leaving Japan that year, but did not make clear his current whereabouts. A spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said he had no information on the case and declined to comment. The man had been seen at mosques near Tokyo and also had contact at train stations with a 27-year-old Pakistani in the trading business who had lived in Yokohama near Tokyo and a 40-year-old Pakistani and former employee of a Tokyo bookbinding firm, Sankei said. Tokyo police have arrested the 40-year-old Pakistani on suspicion of violating immigration laws, and are continuing surveillance activities to track down the SSP network in Japan, the newspaper said. Japan, which has sent some 550 ground troops to Iraq on a reconstruction mission, has been on guard against possible attacks since being mentioned by members of Islamist militant group al Qaeda as a possible target. Prior to Japanâs deployment of troops to Samawa in southern Iraq, al Qaeda had reportedly threatened to "strike in the heart of Tokyo" if Japan sent troops to Iraq. Japan dispatched its main contingent of troops to Iraq in February 2004. In May 2004, Japanese police arrested several foreigners in a probe into the activities of Lionel Dumont, a French national with links to al Qaeda who entered Japan on a false passport in 2002 and stayed for over a year. There is no official data on the number of Muslims in Japan, but police sources have put the number around 90,000. They are mainly from Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Iran and Turkey, the sources said. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-12-30 |
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