A former army officer with alleged links to the Sept 11 hijackers who attacked New York and Washington has been ordered detained for a further two years, a security official said today.

Yazid Sufaat, a US-trained biochemist who has been in detention since his arrest in November 2001 as he returned from Afghanistan, is being held without trial under legislation which allows for two-year detention orders to be renewed indefinitely.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who is also Home Minister, signed the new detention order, which came into effect today, the official told AFP .

Yazid was questioned here by US investigators in November 2002 about his connections to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to face trial in the United States over the attacks carried out by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group.

He is alleged to have hosted Moussaoui ( photo ) when he visited Malaysia a year before the attacks in the US and is said to have provided the Moroccan-born French citizen with a letter appointing him as US marketing agent for a Malaysian computer software company.

Yazid also allegedly allowed his appartment to be used in early 2000 for a meeting of al-Qaeda operatives, including hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi who were aboard the plane which crashed into the Pentagon.

Put him on trial

The Abolish ISA Movement in a statement condemned the extension of Yazid's ISA detention, and called for him to be put on trial immediately or to be released unconditionally.

"It is mind boggling that after making such specific allegations, the government decides not to put him on trial on those allegations but to continue his detention under ISA," it said.

"The failure of the government to charge Yazid Sufaat in court only implies that those allegations tantamount to only hearsay, without any concrete evidence to show."

Malaysia is holding around 90 suspected Islamic militants, many of them allegedly members of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for the Bali bomb attack which killed 202 people in October 2002. - AFP