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Cambodia convicts three Moslems, deports 28 and their families
From Front Page, an article by Stephen Brown.... Last December 29, a Cambodian judge handed the three Islamists life sentences in prison for their part in a plot to blow up the American and British embassies in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, in 2002. Two of the convicted are Thai Muslims, while the third belongs to Cambodia's indigenous Muslim community. All are believed to be involved with Jemaah Islamiyah, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist network in Southeast Asia, which wants to establish an Islamist super state in the area. A fourth defendant, an Egyptian, was acquitted. The Cambodian prosecutor in the case said the three planned the terrorist attack with Hambali, the mastermind of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia, which killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists. The three Islamists were accused of using a Saudi Arabian-funded Islamic school, where they were employed as teachers, as a cover to carry out the embassy bombings. Cambodian authorities subsequently closed down the Phnom Penh-area school and expelled from the country 28 foreign Muslims and their families, who originated from as far away as Nigeria. .... The three terrorist-teachers were also accused of having hidden him [Hambali] during his sojourn in Cambodia, during which time he taught them to use explosives. .... The terrorists' arrests occurred in May, 2003, ... after American intelligence had reportedly tipped off Cambodian security authorities. The Phnom Penh Post newspaper also reported that agents from the Central Intelligence Agency interrogated the suspects after they were taken into custody. .... Islamists are trying to radicalize Cambodia's indigenous Muslim population, which numbers about 500,000 in a nation of 12 million, 90 per cent of which is Buddhist. Most Cambodian Muslims belong to the ethnic Cham minority, while the rest are Malays. .... Islamic fundamentalists, many from the Arab world, have come into the region to "purify" the Islam practiced there with either a strict Wahhabi version or by a form of Islamic orthodoxy called Tablighi Jama'at. .... Arab charities are also active in setting up puritanical schools and mosques around the country. Moreover, about 80 Wahabbi students leave Cambodia every year for religious studies in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, while additional Cambodian Muslim students are contacted in Malaysia, their traditional destination for Islamic education, and are persuaded to move to madrassas in Pakistan. Upon their return ... they take a hard line towards to the traditional practice of Islam in Cambodia. .... Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2005-01-14 |
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