Tour ends after kidnap threat

Press, 21 February 1978, Page 9

Tour ends after kidnap threat

NZPA Kuala Lumpur The Malaysian Prime Minister (Datuk Hussein Onn) has cut short his visit to Australia . and returned to Kuala Lumpur because of a reported threat to kidnap him in Melbourne.

He told reporters on arrival that he had been advised by Australian security services that more than one! Malaysian had gone to Mel-1 bourne “to kidnap me and to do something harmful to me.”

Datuk Hussein who attended the four-day Commonwealth Heads of Government regional meeting in Sydney, was to have met Malaysian students in Melbourne yesterday afternoon and returned home tomorrow.

A Melbourne report said that the ‘’Melbourne Herald” newspaper was tipped off by an anonymous phone caller.

The man stated: “I have information which should interest you and I am very worried about.

“This morning there are 16 people going to Melbourne to kidnap Hussein of Kuala Lumpur at 1.30 p.m. and I am so worried about it. Between four and seven

people came from Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday. They are from the Malaysian Freedom League.”

The caller, who refused to give his name or reveal where he was speaking ; from, said they would join I others and a total of 16 I‘ will do the job.” The news-i paper passed the information i to the police. I The Malaysian Freedom League is not known in Malaysia. Informed sources said it could be a front organisation of the outlawed Communist Party of Malaya. The Malaysian leader’s l special plane flew without him to Melbourne, where a welcoming party of state government officials waited vainly for Datuk Hussein to disembark, and then took off again two hours later for Sydney to pick up the Prime Minister and his party. The reason for the apparently needless flight to Melbourne was not disclosed.

The Australian police are still hunting for the persons who planted the bomb that killed two rubbish men last week outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel on the first day of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.