KUALA LUMPUR - The two Malaysian terrorist suspects being detained at Guantanamo Bay for allegedly planning a second wave of attacks in the United States after the 9/11 tragedy are unlikely to be deported to Malaysia.
Sources said Mohd Farik Amin @ Zaid @ Zubair, 37, and Mohammed Nazir Lep @ Bashir Lep @ Lillie, 36, are instead likely to be charged either in a civil or military court in the United States.
They said senior Malaysian police officers had recently met with US officials on the request made by Malaysia to have them imprisoned here but were told the two would likely be charged there.
"The two were couriers and have been implicated in a planned al-Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked plane into the 73-storey Library Tower/US Bank Tower in Los Angeles.
"No date was given for the mission but the plot, named Project California, would have been the biggest since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks," the sources said.
Former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had said that Malaysia had requested for the two to be imprisoned here following President Barack Obama's announcement that Guantanamo Bay would be closed down.
Both Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir are being held in Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay.
The two were said to have helped the authorities capture Hambali, a key man in Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in South-East Asia.
All three (Hambali, Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir) were also implicated in the 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, in which 202 people were killed, and the 2003 bomb attack at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people.
Project California was supposed to be the second wave of attacks by al-Qaeda, but it failed when intelligence forces got wind of it.
Mohd Farik and Mohammed Nazir were members of the outlawed Jemaah Islamiyah, which wanted to set up a pan-Islamic region spanning Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei through violent means.
Both men, who had received arms training in Afghanistan, were arrested in Bangkok in 2003.
