Malawi Deputy Chief Immigration Officer Richard Matiya confirmed the arrest but could not be drawn to shed more light on circumstances leading to the arrest.

"We, as a department, were just handed over these suspects but other than that we don't have any further information," he said.

The arrested al-Qaeda suspects include Mahmud Sardar Issa, a Sudanese national who heads a charitable organization in Blantyre, Fahad Ral Bahli, a Saudi national who is Malawi Branch Director of the Registered Trustees of the Prince Sultan Bin Aziz Special Committee on Relief, Turkish nationals Arif Ulusam, a Blantyre restaurant owner, and Ibrahim Itabaci, executive director of the Bedir International School, and Kenyan national Khalifa Abdi Hassan, an Islamic scholar hired by the Moslem Association of Malawi.

Sources said Monday the five were arrested in a joint operation by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States and Malawi's National Intelligence Bureau after gathering information that the five were connected to Osama bin Laden's worldwide terrorist organization's East Africa cells.

According to the sources, al-Qaeda wanted to use their charitable organizations to channel money from Asia where al-Qaeda is based to fund operations in Africa and beyond.

Meanwhile, Blantyre lawyer Shabir Latif has since obtained a court injunction to stop the Malawi government and its agents from further detaining and deporting the five suspects.

Latif told High Court Judge Healey Potani that his clients were arrested without being told what crime they had committed.

Latif alleged that the Malawi government wanted to hand over the five to the CIA who would, according to him, take them to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp where other al-Qaeda suspects, especially those arrested in Afghanistan, are being detained.

(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2003)