(CBS) Malaysia has used a controversial internal security law to detain a former army captain wanted by the United States over the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Yazid Sufaat, one of 23 people arrested in Malaysia since Dec. 9 for alleged membership of a local al-Qaida-linked militant group, would be dealt with under Malaysian law.

"As far as we are concerned, he has committed a serious offense and we cannot hand him over to others to be extradited," Abdullah was quoted as saying Monday by the national news agency, Bernama.

Yazid, 37, was arrested Dec. 9 as he returned to Malaysia from Afghanistan. Police have not charged him with any crime, but is being held under a security law which allows for indefinite detention without trial.

Yazid was the first of 23 arrests in the past two months in a crackdown on what officials say is a local Islamic group with ties to al-Qaida and a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy and other pro-Western targets in neighboring Singapore.

Officials have also linked Yazid directly with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and Zacarias Moussaoui, who is charged in the United States with conspiring to kill thousands of people in the attacks.

Officials said Yazid has been cooperating with Malaysian police and has provided details of meetings he had with the hijackers and Moussaoui.

Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaz al-Hazmi, who were aboard the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon, visited Malaysia in January 2000, staying at Yazid's apartment outside Kuala Lumpur, officials told The Associated Press.

During their stay, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi met with a third al-Qaida operative, who was later identified as a suspect in the USS Cole bombing in October 2000.

Malaysian officials say the Sept. 11 attacks were not discussed at the meeting, but that the al-Qaida agents encouraged Yazid and other local militants to join bin Laden's war against America.

Moussaoui was Yazid's guest during a visit to Malaysia in September 2000, when he opened in Internet account and received a letter naming him as the U.S. and European representative of a Malaysian computer software company. Officials said the letter was signed by Yazid, whose wife was a director of the company.

Officials say Yazid was also connected to the Singapore plot, ordering four tons of ammonium nitrate a fertilizer which can be used to make explosives for an al-Qaida-linked cell there.

News reports from Washington last week cited unnamed sources as saying that the United States was seeking Yazid's extradition. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur declined to comment on the reports.

The law under which Yazid is currently being held does not require that he be brought to trial. The Internal Security Act allows the Home Minister to detain suspects for two years at a time, with the detention order renewable without review.

Malaysia has vowed to arrest more suspected militants in its crackdown on Islaic groups rather than wait till disaster strikes.

A new arena in the U.S.-led war on terror has opened in Asia with the recent arrests of dozens of suspected militants by Malaysia and Singapore and the arrival of U.S. troops in the Philippines.