Malaysia said it has no choice but to accept its citizens returning home after fighting alongside militant terror groups abroad.
Bukit Aman’s counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said rejecting fighters who wished to return runs the risk of them going back to their militant ideology.
“We don’t want to fall into that narrative. They are Malaysians and it is our duty to help,” he told Singapore’s Straits Times recently.
He said accepting them back in Malaysia could prevent the problem of militancy from getting worse.
“And by worse, I mean them launching attacks on foreign lands out of frustration. Who is going to be responsible for that?”
In May, Ayob said that 35 of the 65 Malaysians detained in Syria on suspicion of terrorist activities had informed the police that they wished to come home.
Ayob also said that authorities are currently working to bring home Nor Mahmudah Ahmad, the 30-year-old widow of slain Malaysian terrorist Muhammad Wanndy Mohd Jedi.
Wanndy and his three sons were killed in a US drone strike in Raqqa, then the capital of the Islamic State in 2017. Mahmudah survived the attack.
Ayob said that Mahmudah will be required to undergo a compulsory de-radicalisation programme.
She apparently remarried after the death of the three sons.
Her current husband, a Belgian IS fighter, will not be allowed into Malaysia, Ayob said.
“She has finally realised (she is in the wrong) and she feels stuck,” Straits Times quoted him as saying.
Ayob admitted bringing Mahmudah back would not be a popular move but the police believed it was better than leaving her to become further radicalised.
The date of Mahmudah’s repatriation is uncertain as her application is still being processed.
She is currently at the Al-Houl refugee camp.
Wanndy was one of the group’s top recruiters and considered the brains behind the 2016 grenade attack on the Movida bar in Puchong, Selangor. Eight people were injured in that incident.
Two men then aged 22 and 25 were arrested over the attack.