Of the detainees, 37-year-old Bangladeshi suspect, Peyar Ahmed Akash from Feni, was arrested on August 19 for smuggling weapons for an international terror group.
The two others are from Nepal and Morocco, the Straits Times reported yesterday.
Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said the suspects were detained by the Bukit Aman Special Branch Counter Terrorism Division between August 2 and September 17.
Khalid said: “He [Bangladeshi national] owns a restaurant [Rasana Bilash] in Bukit Bintang and was placed in Interpol’s Red Notice. He was deported on September 2.”
The Detective Branch of police handed him over to Dagonbhuiyan police station on September 3.
He was shown arrested the following day and sent to jail through the District Joint Sessions Judge’s Court.
Akash came into light in 2005, after RAB had arrested him for selling off four AK47 rifles – stolen from the 10-truck arms seized in 2004 – to Delwar alias Azrail Delwar, a listed terrorist linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir. But he managed to come out of jail on bail by the grace of his brother-in-law Abu Yusuf – the nayeb-e-ameer of Feni district unit Jamaat.
He joined Jamaat-e-Islami’s radical student wing Shibir while studying in Shaheen Academy School of Feni town, run by Jamaat. He passed SSC in 1993 and eventually got engaged in arms trading.
RAB arrested him along with two of his associates in Feni on September 18, 2005 based on information given by Delwar, who was killed in an alleged gunfight with RAB at Fatikchhari of Chittagong on May 7, 2005.
Peyar Ahmed Akash (red shirt) and three of his associates after their arrest in 2005
Jailed for seven years in the case, he secured bail after some time and resumed arms trading, according to sources in Feni police.
Akash went to Malaysia after the 1/11 changeover and got engaged in manpower and hotel businesses, and soon became an influential leader of the Feni community in Kuala Lumpur.
He was also accused of campaigning against the war crimes trials in the Bangladeshi community in Malaysia for long. Being informed, Bangladesh government last year requested Interpol for his arrest, and later Interpol issued the red alert.