Alleged al-Qaeda terrorist network operative Yazid Sufaat has been slapped with a two-year detention order under the Internal Security Act, his wife Sejahratul Dursina said today.

She was informed by police this afternoon that her husband had been taken to the Kamunting Detention Centre in Perak yesterday after the order was issued by the Home Affairs Ministry, she told malaysiakini.

Sejahratul, however, stressed that Yazid, her husband of 17 years, was not a terrorist or a militant.

I strongly deny these allegations against him. They are baseless, wrong, and outrageous, said the 36-year-old mother of four adding that Yazids arrest was an attempt to warm up US-Malaysia ties.

Yazid, 37, was detained by police on Dec 9 last year at the Malaysia-Thai border on his way back from Bangkok, Thailand.

Police have since early last month arrested 23 people under the controversial ISA which permits indefinite detention without trial. The 23 were alleged to be members of a secret cell within the Malaysian Mujahidin Group (KMM).

Police claim the group was part of a regional network which aimed to overthrow governments and set up Islamic administrations in their respective countries.

Extradition possibility

International news magazine Newsweek in its latest issue dated Feb 4 said that Yazid, who runs a pathology laboratory, was an operative for the al-Qaeda terrorist network linked to Osama bin Laden, whom America blames for the Sept 11 attacks.

It was alleged that in Kuala Lumpur in late 2000, Yazid had met with two terrorist suspects who were among those who had hijacked two jetliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers in New York.

The Newsweek report also quoted Malaysian investigators as saying that Yazid had ordered four tons of explosives.

Apart from that, Yazid was said to have signed a letter appointing French Moroccan Zacarias Moussaoui as a software companys marketing representative in the United States. Moussaoui was charged in the US last month for conspiring with the Al-Qaeda.

The New York Times yesterday reported that the US was negotiating with Malaysia in hopes that Yazid could be extradited to face charges in the United States.

Last year, police arrested some 30 alleged KMM operatives, mostly PAS members, under the ISA.

Dont raise topic

Meanwhile, Sejahratul said she last saw her husband two weeks ago during a third visit at the Kuala Lumpur police contingent headquarters where he had been held since his arrest.

During the first visit, he asked me not to do anything or to take any legal action. [Thats] not [like] him, she said.

She said that during their second meeting, Yazid had even asked her to stop attending the night religious classes which they had been doing for the past three years.

Asked if she had confronted Yazid on the terrorist allegations against him, Sejahratul said she was told by police not to raise the topic.

They (the police) told me not to discuss matters which could make them end the visit abruptly, she said.