JOHOR BARU, May 18 — Home Minister Senator Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the slain terror suspect who attacked the Ulu Tiram police station here yesterday had acted on his own.
According to The Star today, the minister said that while the man was a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the terrorist group did not appear to be involved.
“Based on interrogation made on over 40 individuals and checks on the suspect's house, the man was acting as a lone wolf.
“We found that the perpetrator acted alone. This is a lone-wolf attack," Saifuddin said in a press conference at the Johor police contingent headquarters here today.
Saifuddin said that investigations on the attack began without delay, including checking profiles or police databases on similar incidents.
"As such, we have called a total of 46 individuals for interrogations to assist in the investigation,” he was quoted saying.
Yesterday, two young constables, Ahmad Azza Fahmi Azhar and Muhamad Syafiq Ahmad Said, were killed by the the 21-year-old attacker in the Ulu Tiram police station at about 2.30am yesterday. A third policeman on duty was seriously injured after he managed to take down the attacker.
Following the attack, police arrested seven individuals, including five members of the suspect’s family, aged 19 to 62, and initial investigations revealed that the suspect’s father is a member of a JI cell in Ulu Tiram.
The police are currently going after the JI cell’s remaining 20 members in Johor.
The attack is being investigated under Section 302 of the Penal Code for murder.
The JI terror group is a Southeast Asian Islamist militant group based in Indonesia and has dedicated their struggle to form an Islamic caliphate through violent means.
The group, with links to global Islamist terror group al-Qaeda, was believed to be linked to the 2002 Bali bombings in Indonesia.
* A previous version of the report contained an error that has since been corrected.
