BEIJING: Malaysian police have arrested and deported 28 militants back to China since 2013.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said the militants, who were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), were detained on transit in Malaysia while on their way to Turkey, prior to joining the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Syria and Iraq.
He said the arrests of the ETIM members, founded by Uighur militants in western China, were the result of sharing of intelligence between China and Malaysia.
"Chinese intelligence shared their information, including biometrics, with us. The militants were detained before they could leave Malaysia. They were arrested under the Special Measures Against Terrorism in Foreign Countries Act 2015 (SMATA)," he told Malaysian media here.
Zahid said the Chinese authorities had thanked Malaysia for the success, as well as the work done by Malaysian police in arresting members of syndicates, comprising both Malaysians and Chinese, who had defrauded the East Asian superpower's citizens.
He said 744 members of such syndicates, based in Malaysia, had been nabbed over the past few years. They were reported to have fleeced at least RM12.9 billion from Chinese citizens in various scams.
Zahid said the Chinese government had expressed their gratitude to him in meetings with Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun and Communist Party of China (CPC) Political and Legal Affairs Secretary Meng Jianzhu.
He said, in the meetings, several issues pertaining to trans-border crimes and terrorism were discussed, with both countries agreeing to step up cooperation.
The most significant agreement was that China would provide assistance in terms of technology and state-of-the-art equipment for the Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Communications Centre.
Meanwhile, on his meeting with newly-elected Interpol president Meng Hongwei, Zahid said he had suggested that the international police organisation could be made more effective by holding more frequent meetings both on the regional and global stages.
He said he had also told the century-old organisation's first Asian president that Interpol needed to be brought more up to date so that information sharing among member countries could reach "real-time" levels.