MELBOURNE: A terror expert has warned that a new figure, who has visited Malaysia, may be linking Southeast Asian Islamists with the Middle East.

Known as Jafar the Algerian, little is known about the man, an Asian expert with the International Crisis Group, Sidney Jones, said.

"The Jemaah Islamiyah leadership was in contact with him," she was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press.

Jafar had bought plane tickets for two men, one of whom was on Indonesia's most-wanted list.

"It's not clear whether the police knew enough about him (the second man) to put him on the wanted list but he was at a series of meetings in which violence was planned.
"Jafar had got the tickets for these two and accompanied them to Malaysia and then disappeared the night before they were arrested.

"The suspicion is that he may have been linked to the Algerian al-Qaeda affiliate but nobody knows for sure."

Jones warned against making any judgment about how important Jafar may be to the Islamist network.

"We can't say for certain that he's al-Qaeda, that's what it looks like but we don't know enough to say.

"He's still out there and the last anybody knows is that he was in Kuala Lumpur."

Jafar also organised fake passports for the two men arrested in Malaysia, she added.

On Wednesday, Jones warned a conference of security experts that the reawakening of the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the Pakistan-Af-ghanistan border also was bad news for the counter-terrorism fight in Southeast Asia. -- Bernama