Malaysian police have arrested five more Malaysians who are said to be followers and sympathizers of the defunct Sri Lankan terrorist group, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The police have so far arrested 12 people from different locations.
Two of the seven men arrested in the first swoop last week were ethnic-Indian assemblymen from the Democratic Action Party (DAP), part of the ruling Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, The Straits Times reported.
The Chief of the Counter Terrorism Division Malaysian Police Datuk Ayob Khan at a press conference in Bukit Aman today said financial transactions involving huge sum of money were detected in the accounts of individuals detained in the operations carried out on Thursday and Saturday (Oct 10 and 12) over their alleged involvement in LTTE.
The police believe that there are efforts to activate the LTTE group in the country.
“The financial transactions are believed to fund the promotional activities, recruitment and mobilization of LTTE programs in the country,” he said at a press conference today.
The official said there is a movement trying to activate the LTTE and that’s why the police are making the arrests to stop it from expanding.
The counter-terrorism chief stressed that the arrests were against a terrorist group and not against the Tamils. He said there was nothing wrong to have sympathies for the Tamils in Sri Lanka, but it is an offence to support the LTTE as they are a terror group.
The LTTE has been listed as a terrorist group in Malaysia since 2014.
