A Malaysian web-hosting company which has been implicated in hosting websites which are allegedly linked to al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks has since removed such sites from their servers.

"We have cut off all websites that are linked to terrorism," said Acme Commerce Sdn Bhd's business manager Alfred Lim when contacted today.

The Kuala Lumpur-based company came into spotlight for allegedly hosting the muntada al-Ansar website, which yesterday showed the grisly video footage of the beheading of Nick Berg, an American who was kidnapped in Iraq by militants said to be linked to terrorist group al-Qaeda.

At press time, Lim told malaysiakini that he was in the midst of lodging a police report to protect his company against allegations that it was connected to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

According to webblogger Jeff Ooi's Screenshots , a trace on muntada al-Ansar - the website which shocked the world yesterday with the grainy two-minute video of the gruesome beheading - indicated it was hosted by Acme Commerce.

Six other websites

While Acme Commerce said that it could not confirm whether muntada al-Ansar was hosted by them, the website has since gone offline.

However, a search by malaysiakini revealed that Acme Commerce has also hosted at least six other terrorist-linked websites through one of its business unit, Webserver.com.my, also based in Kuala Lumpur.

The six - al-ansar.biz, ezzedeen.net, qoqaz.com, alsakifah.org, islamicblock.com and h-alali.net - are allegedly affiliated to various Islamic militant groups such as al-Qaeda, Hamas (the Islamic resistant movement in Palestine) and Kavkaz (which is associated with the Chechen rebels in Russia).

All the websites' IP addresses - identity tags given to Internet user gateways by telecommunication companies - are owned by Acme Commerce.

A check by malaysiakini this afternoon however showed that only half of these sites - al-ansar.biz, ezzedeen.net, qoqaz.com - have since been taken offline. At 6pm, alsakifah.org, islamicblock.com and h-alali.net can still be accessible * [At 7.50pm, all three websites have also been unplugged] .

When questioned, Acme Commerce's Lim conceded that the company had hosted Kavkaz-linked qoqaz.com between 2001 to 2002, but he said the service has since been terminated.

"The site is no longer with us, we stopped providing the service to that site after the deal expired in 2002," he said.

Each website hosted by Acme Commerce pays a monthly fee of between RM25 and RM3,500.

Websites in Arabic

Lim added that it is difficult to monitor the content of the websites hosted by Acme Commerce since the company is managing over 5,000 sites worldwide.

He said that the fact that these websites are in Arabic did not necessary mean that they are linked to terrorism.

"We cannot say that a site which is in Arabic language is immediately linked to terrorism. Similarly, we cannot say Chinese language websites are linked to communism," he replied.

DAP chairperson Lim Kit Siang in a statement today urged the government to investigate whether Cyberjaya - Malaysia's IT hub - is hosting terrorist-linked websites to ensure that the country does not gain international notoriety as a "centre of international terrorism".

A spokesperson with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, when contacted, said there is no legal provision for the government to control Internet content.

He added that the no censorship assurance is provided under the Multimedia Super Corridor's Bill of Guarantee.