KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police expanded their probe Friday into a major Muslim company with links to a banned sect, after hundreds of children were rescued from alleged abuse at care homes believed to be run by the group.
Investigators stormed 20 charity shelters across two Malaysian states on Wednesday, arresting 171 suspects including religious studies teachers and caregivers, and bringing to safety 400 children.
In what is believed to be the worst such case to hit Malaysia in decades, police suspect the victims — aged from one to 17 — had been subjected to sexual and physical attacks.
They were also allegedly forced by the care home staff to abuse each other.
Investigators were “working toward” further raids and arrests as the probe on the organization called Global Ikhwan Services and Business (GISB) continues, said police inspector-general Razarudin Husain.
Investigations and health checks so far show that at least 13 minors had been sexually abused, Razarudin said at a press conference.
The children, who are temporarily being housed in a police training center in Kuala Lumpur among other locations, are still undergoing medical examinations, added the police chief.
Razarudin had said on Wednesday that children as young as five were burnt with hot spoons, while others who were ill were not allowed to seek treatment until their condition became critical.
“The caretakers also touched the children’s bodies as if to carry out medical checks,” he said.
GISB has denied the allegations and said they do not run the care homes raided in the states of Selangor and Negri Sembilan.
“It is not our policy to do things that go against Islam, and the laws,” the group said in a statement this week.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he has urged relevant authorities to “investigate thoroughly” without delay.
“This concerns the faith of the community. It is important and a serious matter, involving abuse of power, misuse of religion,” he told reporters after performing Friday prayers.
Multi-ethnic Malaysia has a dual-track legal system, with Muslims subject to sharia (Islamic law) in certain areas.
GISB has long been controversial for its links to the now-defunct Al-Arqam sect and has faced scrutiny by religious authorities in the Muslim-majority country.
Al-Arqam was banned by the authorities in 1994 for deviant teachings, while GISB members had in 2011 set up an “Obedient Wives Club” that called on women to be “whores in bed” to stop their husbands from straying.
According to its website, GISB runs businesses from supermarkets to restaurants, and operates in several countries including Indonesia, France and the United Kingdom.
Police believe the minors in the care homes were all children of GISB members.
“We believe that all 402 children are fathered by GISB members. That’s our suspicion at the moment,” Razarudin told AFP on Thursday.
“We feel that there’s a need for DNA samples to be taken.”
Religious authorities in Selangor state said this week they were closely monitoring GISB’s activities.
“(We) remain vigilant about any facts leading to deviations from true Islamic teachings,” they said.
The United Nations children’s agency underlined the “unimaginable horror” faced by the victims.
The children “will need long-term professional medical and psychosocial support,” said Robert Gass, UNICEF’s Malaysia representative.
The case has also rattled locals.
“This incident is very shocking and sudden,” said Uzair Abdul Aziz, 37, a Selangor resident.
Malaysia widens probe into ‘horror’ care home child abuse
https://arab.news/we8qw
Malaysia widens probe into ‘horror’ care home child abuse
- Investigators stormed 20 charity shelters across two Malaysian states on Wednesday, arresting 171 suspects including religious studies teachers and caregivers, and bringing to safety 400 children
Swedish woman faces trial for war crimes, accused of abusing Yazidis in Syria
Lina Laina Ishaq, who is a Swedish citizen, is accused of committing the crimes during the period from August 2014 to December 2016 in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which at the time was the seat of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.
The trial marks the first time that Deash attacks against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden. The hearings are expected to last about two months, most of them behind closed doors.
The crimes took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, where Ishaq was living at the time.
Under Daesh rule, Yazidi women and children were “regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” prosecutor Reena Devgun said when the charges were made public last month.
The prosecution says that at her home in Raqqa, Ishaq abused Yazidis with the aim to ”completely or partially annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group,” Devgun said as the trial opened at the Stockholm District Court, the Swedish TT news agency said.
The charge sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, says Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, for up to seven months, treated them as slaves and also abused several of those she held captive.
Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is also accused of having molested a baby, said to have been 1 month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to silence him. She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
The Daesh group abducted Yazidi women and children and brought them to Syria in 2014, when Daesh militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
Three years later, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, Ishaq fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops.
She managed to escape to Turkiye where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was later extradited to Sweden.
Ishaq was earlier convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, to an area then controlled by Daesh. She had claimed that at the time, she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and into Daesh-run territory.
Ishaq who already is in prison, was identified through information from a UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq, known as UNITAD.
New blast near Israeli embassy in Denmark
- The blast occurred some 500 meters (yards) from the embassy in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN: A new blast went off near the Israeli embassy in Denmark, police said on Monday as the world marked the one-year anniversary of the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel.
The blast occurred some 500 meters (yards) from the embassy in Copenhagen and came five days after two explosions near the building for which two Swedish nationals have been remanded in custody.
“We are of course looking into whether there could be a connection to the (earlier) incident at the Israeli embassy,” Copenhagen police inspector Trine Moller told reporters.
“There is no indication that this is the case,” she added, adding that the explosion was probably caused by gunfire.
Images on local media showed traces of a blast in front of a residential building some 500 meters away from the Israeli embassy.
The incident occurred on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks, which were followed by Israel’s assaults on Gaza and Lebanon and protests against the wars across the world.
Sweden’s intelligence agency Sapo said that Iran may have been involved in the October 2 explosions in Denmark, as well as a shooting near Israel’s embassy in Stockholm the day earlier.
In May, Sapo said that Iran was recruiting members of Swedish criminal gangs to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden — a claim Iran denied.
Denmark detained three Swedish nationals last week over the explosions and a Danish court on Thursday remanded two of them — aged 16 and 19 — in custody for 27 days.
Copenhagen police said the third Swede, arrested near the crime scene, had been released.
Floods in Bangladesh leave five dead
- Over 100,000 remain stranded as floods continue to ravage northern Bangladesh
- Collapsed bridges, submerged roads make it difficult for authorities to reach affected areas
DHAKA: At least five people have died and more than 100,000 remain stranded as devastating floods, triggered by heavy rains and upstream torrents, continue to ravage northern Bangladesh, officials said on Sunday.
In Sherpur, one of the hardest-hit northern districts, the water levels of major rivers have surged, submerging new areas and displacing thousands of families.
Local authorities fear widespread damage to agriculture, with crops and farmlands, particularly rice fields, facing potential devastation. Many homes and roads are under several feet of water, cutting off villages and leaving residents in desperate need of rescue.
“I have never seen such flooding in my life,” said Abu Taher, a resident of the district.
Army personnel, using boats and helicopters, have joined rescue efforts, delivering emergency supplies and evacuating those trapped by the floods.
Bridges have collapsed, and roads have been submerged, making it difficult for local authorities to reach affected areas.
“Our priority is to evacuate people to safe shelters and provide them with essential supplies,” said Sherpur district administrator Torofdar Mahmudur Rahman.
He said another decomposed body, suspected to have floated from India, had been found.
The low-lying nation of 170 million has experienced multiple floods this year, underscoring its vulnerability to climate change. A 2015 World Bank Institute analysis estimated that 3.5 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of annual river flooding, a risk scientists say is worsening due to global climate change.
As water levels continue to rise, concerns grow about the long-term impact on the region’s agriculture, particularly rice crops. If the floodwaters do not recede soon, the economic toll on farmers could be severe.
Adding to the worries, the weather office has predicted more rain in the coming days, raising fears of further inundation.
Ukraine says hit oil facility on occupied Crimea
- Around 300 people are being evacuated from the Crimean city of Feodosia after a fire at a local oil depot
KYIV: Ukraine said Monday its forces had struck an oil terminal overnight on the Crimean peninsula — controlled by Moscow since 2014 — in Kyiv’s latest attack on Russian-controlled energy facilities.
Around 300 people are being evacuated from the Crimean city of Feodosia after a fire at a local oil depot, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing local authorities.
Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector in recent months aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion, now grinding through its third year.
“At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy’s offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea,” the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media.
Russian-installed authorities in Crimea said a fire had broken out at an oil depot in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.
The Russian defense ministry meanwhile said that 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russia.
“The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transshipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army,” the Ukrainian military said, vowing to continue such attacks.
Ukraine says the strikes are fair retaliation for Russian attacks on its own energy infrastructure that have plunged millions into darkness.
Separately, Russian forces targeted Kyiv with three missiles, city authorities said, adding that debris from one sparked a fire that was extinguished by emergency services.
Blast kills two Chinese workers in Pakistan’s biggest city
KARACHI: A massive blast that targeted a convoy of Chinese workers in Pakistan’s largest city killed two nationals, Beijing’s embassy said Monday, in an attack claimed by a separatist group.
Beijing is a crucial ally for cash-strapped Pakistan but Chinese-funded infrastructure projects have sparked resentment and its nationals are routinely targeted by militant groups.
A “tanker” exploded on the airport motorway in the port city of Karachi around 11:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) Sunday, the regional government of southern Sindh province said on X.
Separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said in a statement that it had “targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors” coming from Karachi’s international airport.
Karachi borders Balochistan province, the largest but poorest region of the country, where billions of dollars have been funnelled into transport, energy and infrastructure projects as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The BLA is waging a war of independence against the state, which it accuses of permitting unfair exploitation of resources by outsiders in the mineral-rich region.
In August, it carried out coordinated attacks across Balochistan that killed dozens of mostly Punjabis, the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, who were working in the region.
Beijing’s embassy to Pakistan said in a statement on Monday that two Chinese citizens had been killed in a “terror attack” on a convoy of personnel from the Chinese-funded Port Qasim power project.
The attack also left one Chinese and several Pakistani citizens wounded, the embassy said.
The embassy urged authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack and severely punish the killers, while at the same time taking practical measures to fully ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects.”
Beijing has repeatedly asked Islamabad to ensure the safety and security of Chinese nationals and its interests.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that it “reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the safety and security of Chinese nationals.”
Sunday night’s attack comes a week before Pakistan hosts several heads of governments for a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, a bloc established by Russia and China to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
Beijing is Islamabad’s closest regional ally, readily providing financial assistance to bail out its often struggling neighbor.
The CPEC has seen tens of billions of dollars funnelled into massive transport, energy and infrastructure projects — part of Beijing’s transnational “Belt and Road” scheme.
A suicide bomber killed five Chinese engineers working on the construction of a dam in northwestern Pakistan in March, temporarily pausing the project.
The attack was not claimed, but it came days after militants attempted to storm offices of the Gwadar deepwater port at the other end of the country, considered a cornerstone of Chinese investment in Pakistan.
In June 2020, Baloch insurgents targeted the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which is partly owned by Chinese companies, in the commercial capital of Karachi.
In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan province overlooking the flagship Chinese-backed deepwater seaport in Gwadar that gives strategic access to the Arabian Sea — killing at least eight people.
