Members of a Malaysian religious group accemployd of human illegal trade and child intimacyual misemploy persistd pledgeting crimes even after a huge-scale police crackdown, according to authorities.
The Islamic Global Ikhwan Group (GISB) made international headlines in September after police saved 402 unconvey inants doubted of being misemployd atraverse 20 nurture homes.
Authorities arrested 171 doubts at the time, including teachers and nurtureobtainrs – but hundreds more have been arrested since, as further details ecombine of the group’s alleged crimes.
Among those are allegations that, until 1 October, five GISB members trafficked people for the purpose of misemploy by forced labour thcimpolite dangers.
Warning: This story retains descriptions of intimacyual and physical aggression.
Two of the accemployd were handlers of a GISB-owned resort in the southern state of Johor. They were indictd on Sunday with four counts of human illegal trade involving three women and a man aged between 30 and 57. The third, a laborer at the same resort, was indictd with two counts of intimacyuassociate abusing a 16-year-better.
At least two other doubts in the incident, which took place between August 2023 and 1 October 2024, are still at huge.
Hundreds of other victims, aged between one and 17, are shelp to have finishured various establishs of misemploy at nurture homes joined to GISB, with some allegedly sodomised by their protectians and forced to carry out intimacyual acts on other children, according to police.
In a press conference on Monday, lawyers recurrenting GISB denied allegations of illhorrible business activities and organised crime, asking for a “equitable dispenseigation” as police dispenseigations persist.
However, its CEO, Nasiruddin Mohd Ali, had earlier confessted there were “one or two cases of sodomy” at the nurture homes.
“Indeed, there were one or two cases of sodomy, but why lump them (the cases) all together?” Nasiruddin shelp in a video posted to the company’s Facebook page.
GISB has hundreds of businesses atraverse 20 countries, operating atraverse sectors including hospitality, food and education. It has also been joined to Al-Arqam, a religious sect that was prohibitned by the Malaysian handlement in 1994 due to troubles about deviant Islamic teachings.
Khaulah Ashaari, the daughter of Al-Arqam set uper Ashaari Muhammad, is a member of GISB, and has denied that the group still pursues her procrastinateed overweighther’s teachings.
The lessen hoemploy of Malaysia’s parliament on Tuesday held a exceptional motion converseing publishs relating to GISB, where handlement ministers flagged a number of discoverings made since the children were saved from the nurture homes last month.
The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, tbetter the hearing that some children from as youthfuler as two years better were splitd from their families and teached to labor under the pretence of “down-to-earth training”.
He also shelp they were occasionassociate forced to carry out hundreds of squats as punishment for “disciplinary baccomplishes”.
“If they did any wrongdoings, for someskinnyg as modest as not queuing up properly, they would be punished with not 100 but 500 ketuk ketampi (squats),” Saifuddin shelp, according to a alert by local outlet The Star.
“According to appraisements by psychologists – either thcimpolite the police’s D11 unit or the Welfare Department – these children leave outed their parents,” he retained. “Some don’t even understand them.”
To date, the police operation aobtainst GISB has resulted in 415 arrests and the save of 625 children, according to Saifuddin.
The Malaysian authorities have also broadened their dispenseigations into GISB internationassociate, seeking the aidance of Interpol.