Malaysian Co. Shuts Beheading Site

Malaysia's foreign minister rejected concerns Thursday that the country might be hosting terrorist Web sites after an al Qaeda-linked site that first posted the gruesome scenes of Islamic militants beheading an American civilian was shut down by the Malaysian company that hosted it.

Internet hosting company Acme Commerce Sdn. Bhd. said it disabled the site, www.al-ansar.biz, early Thursday because it was drawing too much traffic, but insisted it was unaware that the site may have been connected to al Qaeda or that offensive material had been posted on it.

Opposition leader Lim Kit Siang urged Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's government to launch an immediate investigation into the possibility that "Malaysia is hosting a master network of international terrorist Web sites."

However, Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said there was no evidence so far that warranted concern.

"Let the thing be investigated," Syed Hamid told reporters. "I can tell you that we do not support any terrorist actions."

Malaysia prides itself as being one of the Islamic world's most progressive countries. It strongly opposes the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but is an ally in the fight against terrorism and has detained scores of terrorist suspects.

Alfred Lim, Acme Commerce's business manager, told The Associated Press that company officials would probably have shut down the site earlier if they had known what was posted on it.

"We are a legitimate business, in no way related to al Qaeda," Lim said. "We have no control over what our clients put on their Web sites."

The al-Ansar site was operated by a client who rented space on a Malaysian-based Web server owned by Acme Commerce, Lim said.

He said Acme Commerce disabled the site Thursday morning because it had attracted "a sudden surge of massive traffic that is taking up too much bandwidth and causing inconvenience to our other clients."

On Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah said he had been "shocked" to see stills from the video depicting Berg's execution, as well as photos showing U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.

"Violence begets violence," Abdullah told reporters. "That is what it is all about. We must find the root causes and we must stop this. If the violence continues, both sides will show their capability of treating their captives or prisoners in a way we have seen in the photographs."

It was unclear whether Abdullah was aware that a Malaysian company hosted the site which posted the video.

Acme Commerce's policy was not to host sites that carry grisly, defamatory, obscene, potentially offensive material or gambling, Lim said. He said it would "definitely not host this kind of Web site" again.

Lim said checks had shown, however, that it had hosted another Web site with reported Islamic militant ties, www.qoqaz.com, from 2001 until 2002, when the client didn't renew its contract.

He declined to identify the client who ran the al-Ansar site, saying the company — which claims to host 5,000 sites for clients in more than 30 countries — wanted to consult its lawyers first.

Acme Commerce lodged a police report about the site to "declare that the company was not linked to al Qaeda," he said, although it was unclear what action Malaysian authorities might take.

By Sean Yoong