"The Malaysian police have announced the arrests of four people suspected of radicalism or terrorism – including a person believed to be an Indonesian citizen," the ministry's director for the protection of Indonesian citizens, Lalu Muhammad Iqbal, said on Tuesday, without revealing the identity of the man.

Iqbal said the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur had asked the Malaysian police to give it consular access to meet the Indonesian citizen in question. The embassy, he added, was verifying the man's citizenship documents.

Reuters reported earlier that the Malaysian police detained four men – an Indonesian, a Malaysian and two Rohingya Muslims. They are suspected of having plotted a series of killings and attacks in and around the capital of Malaysia during Ramadan.

The Malaysian police's inspector general, Abdul Hamid Bador, said the four men were members of a “wolf pack” cell that planned to launch large-scale attacks during the first week of Ramadan in retaliation for the death of a Muslim fireman during an alleged racially charged riot at a Hindu temple in November.

The fireman's death angered majority Malay Muslims, some of whom had accused Hindu leaders of inciting the riot through racial remarks.

One of the Rohingya suspects, a 20-year-old waiter, told police he was a supporter of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an insurgent group said to be behind a number of killings and attacks in Myanmar's Rakhine state, Abdul Hamid said.

The man possessed a UNHCR identification card issued by the UN refugee agency, he added.

Police also seized a gun and six homemade explosives during the arrests. (ipa)

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