KUALA LUMPUR, May 14 (AFP) - Malaysia will not allow local companies to host websites with links to terrorist groups, the prime minister said Friday, after it was revealed that the site showing the beheading of a US citizen was hosted here.
"We will not allow any kind of web page or any kind of company operating on behalf of any terrorist organisation," Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a news conference.
A Malaysian Internet company which hosted the website showing the grisly video of the decapitation of American Nick Berg by Islamic extremists in Iraq has already closed it down, a company spokesman said.
The company, Acme Commerce, had unwittingly hosted the site and had closed it as soon as it became aware of the content, business manager Alfred Lim said.
"We have cut off all websites that are linked to terrorism," Lim told the Malaysiakini online newspaper, which reported that the company hosted at least six other sites linked to terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda (Usama Bin Ladin's Al-Qa'ida) network.
The leader of the opposition in Malaysia's parliament, Lim Kit Siang of the Democratic Action Party, has called for a government probe into "the serious allegation that Malaysia is hosting a master network of international terrorist websites".
The site that showed the video of five hooded men beheading Berg was named as Muntada al-Ansar, which Alfred Lim said was among 5,000 sites from 45 countries that the company had managed since setting up business in 1998.
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said the government would invstigate the issue, but added: "There are so many terrorist organisations in Europe and the US, but that does not make the US or Europe a terrorist country."
Malaysia is a mainly-Muslim country which has been sharply critical of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but is at the same time a strong opponent of terrorism, having detained more than 80 alleged Islamic militants suspected of links to terror groups.
It is seen as one of the most highly-developed countries in the Islamic world, and its sophisticated infrastructure has in the past been blamed for attracting unwelcome visits by terrorism planners.
One of the suspects in detention, former army officer Yazid Sufaat, is alleged to have allowed his apartment to be used in early 2000 for a meeting of Al-Qaeda operatives, including two hijackers who were aboard the plane which crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
The latest allegations will be an unwelcome blow to Malaysia, which was also embroiled in a scandal over the nuclear black market earlier this year.
A company owned by the son of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Scomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE), allegedly manufactured centrifuge parts seized on a ship headed for Libya's nuclear weapons programme last year.
The company was cleared in a police probe after saying it had been misled about the purpose and destination of the parts, which were ordered by an alleged middleman for Pakistan's disgraced scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who has admitted selling nuclear secrets.
(Description of Source: Hong Kong AFP in English -- Hong Kong service of the independent French press agency Agence France-Presse)
Translated from the original by WNC.
toolkit.dialog.com/intranet/cgi/present?STYLE=739318018&PRESENT=DB=985,AN=189300E-mail this article