A terror attack earlier this year on a Malaysian police station appeared to have been inspired by the Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an Indonesian pro-Islamic State umbrella terror organization, terrorism analysts say. Two policemen were killed in May during an attack on a police station in the Ulu Tiram suburb of Malaysia’s southernmost state of Johor, the second Islamic State-inspired terror attack on Malaysian soil after a pub bombing in 2016.
The attacker, 21-year-old Radin Luqman Radin Imran, was killed by responding policemen at the station. Subsequent investigations resulted in his father, Singaporean mother, older brother, and two sisters being arrested and charged in court for nine terror offenses altogether.
In one of his four charges, the father, Radin Imran Radin Mohd Yassin, was accused of encouraging terrorist acts by incorporating Islamic State ideology into his family.
JAD is well-known in Indonesia for involving whole family networks in carrying out terror attacks, such as the 2018 Surabaya bombings in Indonesia, which were perpetrated by three families.
Apart from churches, in Southeast Asia the Islamic State is infamous for attacking police stations, including fatal attacks on a police station in West Java province in 2022, in North Sumatra province in 2019, in Riau province in 2016, and the national police headquarters in Jakarta in 2021.
Malaysian terrorism analyst Munira Mustaffa said that based on available reports and comments by authorities, the Ulu Tiram attack appeared to have been inspired by JAD, but the suspects were not formally affiliated with or directed by the group.
“This nuance is important,” Munira, the executive director of Chasseur Group, told The Diplomat. “The style of the attack bore a striking resemblance to those carried out or associated with JAD in Indonesia between 2016 and 2018.
“But to my knowledge, the perpetrator had no direct contact or forged any formal affiliations with JAD, which is why I said it was likely inspired.”
Initially, Malaysian police linked the police station attack to Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), another Indonesian terror group, due to the fact the attacker’s father was a JI member, according to Malaysian police. However, when the family of five were charged in court in June, their charges were linked to the pro-Islamic State group instead. Apparently, the father had switched ideology.
“Proper attack attribution is important,” said Munira, formerly an analyst at the Malaysian foreign ministry’s Southeast Asia Regional Center for Counter-Terrorism.
“There is a common but mistaken tendency to treat Salafi jihadist groups as a monolith, despite their distinct differences. Each group operates uniquely, with varied target selection and attack execution methods,” she said. “Proper attribution helps us understand the specific circumstances and motivations behind an incident. We need to develop the correct response in order to mitigate and prevent a similar tragedy from happening again.
“When JI was actively conducting attacks, they functioned as a centralized unit, not decentralized. The [police station] attack did not bear any hallmarks of JI’s attack or targeting style,” she concluded.
JI’s senior leaders on June 30 announced the dissolution of the group and said that they would return to the fold of the Republic of Indonesia and abide by its laws.
The announcement received both praise and skepticism.
Kenneth Yeo Yaoren, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, echoed Munira’s sentiment.
“Claims that the Ulu Tiram case being linked to JI are unfounded,” he told The Diplomat. “The only thing linking the attack to JI is the perpetrator’s father’s affiliation to JI. However, it is clear that the modus operandi is very different from a typical JI attack.”
He elaborated: “JI practices strategic patience; the last JI attack was in 2009 and it was a highly planned and coordinated attack. Typical JI targets are foreign entities like embassies and hotels. I don’t recall JI attacking police stations,” Yeo said. “The Ulu Tiram attack is more aligned with the JAD’s modus operandi. They generally lack strategic patience and launch more small-scale opportunistic attacks. JAD also typically targets police stations and churches.”
Yeo said if the perpetrator was influenced or directed by a group, it would be more likely for the individual to be linked to Islamic State groups like JAD rather than JI.
“Nevertheless, we should not overanalyze statements issued by the authorities. Malaysian police only mentioned that the perpetrator’s father was affiliated with JI; I don’t recall any announcements that explicitly links the attack to JI.”
Munira said the Ulu Tiram attack was an anomaly in Malaysia’s case, because the father acted as the radicalizing agent, and he reportedly isolated his entire family from society for this singular purpose.
Could this anomaly exist elsewhere in Malaysia?
“While the likelihood of this occurrence remains low, it is not entirely implausible,” Munira said. “PDRM has quite likely already conducted thorough investigations on other former members since the incident,” she added, using the Malay abbreviation for Polis Diraja Malaysia or Royal Malaysia Police. “Nevertheless, it is imperative for our stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of the threat’s nature to formulate more effective responses and mitigate the associated risks.
The Malaysian police chief recently announced that police stations will remain open 24 hours a day, but their gates will close from 10 p.m. to prevent terror attacks from recurring.
“My concern is that the decision to close small police stations after 10 p.m. appears to be a short-term solution,” Munira added. “This measure may inadvertently lead to a displacement effect, where the perpetrators might simply shift their focus to different targets instead if it were to happen again.”
Yeo said based on available evidence, it is likely that the Malaysian family, described in a commentary in The Diplomat as an isolated cell, was radicalized independently.
“There is no evidence of a coordinated network,” Yeo said. “Here, I think it is important to emphasize that there is no single profile of a terrorist. Cases of radicalization are likely to be randomly distributed across the population.
“Nevertheless, it is important to note that terrorists only represent the most extreme sections of society. I believe that most people oppose terrorism. Hence, we should be optimistically vigilant about the terrorist threat.”
Yeo said the police station attack came as a shock for analysts because Malaysia has not been an explicit target of organized terrorist groups. While there were plots in Malaysia before, according to Yeo, they were not conducted by organized groups like the JI, JAD, or the Abu Sayyaf Group in the southern Philippines.
“There was no precedent of terrorist groups directing [an] attack directly against Malaysia, unlike Indonesia and the Philippines. Plots in Malaysia tend to be orchestrated by individuals who were inspired by charismatic influencers online,” he said.
After the police station attack, Malaysian police in June arrested more people for alleged links to the Islamic State, plots to attack the king, prime minister, dignitaries including senior police officers, and spreading Islamic State ideology.
Some of the suspects were alleged recidivists.
With all these flurry of Islamic State-linked arrests, has the terror group resurged in Malaysia?
“Not necessarily,” said Munira. “Resurgence would indicate growth or expansion. There would be a bigger effort at rebuilding. At this juncture, they’re still being tracked, disrupted, and derailed.”
Yeo agreed there has been no resurgence of Islamic State per se. He pointed out that the annual number of terrorist-related arrests ranged between 50 to 150 arrests annually between 2014 and 2019, “However, there is a steep decline in the number of terrorist arrests after 2020. This should prompt us to ask ourselves, what caused the steep decline in terrorism in Malaysia? Has Malaysia done something so significant to warrant such a reduction in numbers? I don’t think any policies can justify such a drastic decrease in arrest numbers.”
Yeo said one speculation is that COVID-19 led to the reprioritization of individual choices and safe distancing measures may have limited the opportunities for attacks.