Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said this following the arrests of 48 suspects linked to militant groups.
“We believe they used student passes based on our arrests prior to this, that is of nine suspects from Abu Sayyaf, which is based in southern Philippines.
“To date, we have found that some used fake documents to enter the country. They came to Malaysia on the pretext of studying at religious institutions here and were given student visas,” he told a media conference after the National Sports Day celebration here today.
Yesterday, Fuzi, in a statement, said 45 suspected foreign terrorists had been nabbed on Oct 6, and that the police are cooperating with institutions of higher learning to ferret out terrorists using student visas.
According to him, the police viewed seriously the presence of foreign terrorists in the country as Malaysia was among the countries they (the terrorists) focused on.
He said the police had also co-operated with other local and foreign security agencies to ensure there was no foreign terrorist threat in the country.
“We will take proactive measures from time to time. We believe they are using their contacts, especially involving Islamic State (IS) elements here and in other countries.
“For example, we arrested 19 of them last month. We managed to detect them through our collaboration with the intelligence network in other countries,” Fuzi said.