Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry announced on Wednesday that the number of accused Islamic militants being detained without trial since a government crackdown began in 2001 had risen to 37.

Most are alleged members of the JI regional terrorist group and all are being held under the controversial Internal Security Act (ISA), which allows for people deemed a national security threat to be detained for two years without trial.

The two-year period for the first batch of 13 people detained in the crackdown expired this month but the government said on Wednesday their imprisonment would continue for at least another two years.

Although an advisory board chaired by Supreme Court judge Chao Hick Tin reviewed their cases, the government did not explain why they would continue to be detained.

The Home Affairs Ministry also announced a Singaporean man accused of being a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Filipino separatist group, had been detained under the ISA since October 2002.

The long delay in announcing Alahuddeen bin Abdullah's detention, plus the extra two years' jail for the initial batch of 13, prompted renewed calls from opponents of the ISA for the detainees to be judged in open court.

"We want those arrested under the ISA to be put on trial," Mansor Abdul Rahman, the chairman of Singapore's minor opposition Democratic Progressive Party, told AFP.

"The ministry says this group of people are terrorists. If the government has all sorts of proof, we don't see why it's so difficult for the government to put them on trial. This would clear the doubt."

International human rights organisation Amnesty International echoed Mansor's comments.

"The ISA violates the right to a fair and public trial and the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty," Amnesty's coordinator for Singapore and Malaysia, Margaret John, told AFP.

"Since we know of cases where detainees were denied access to lawyers and relatives during the first few weeks of their detention, this raises fears that they may have been tortured or ill-treated.

"In short, the ISA used in this way violates fundamental human rights."

But the government, which used the ISA to help crush the communist threat in the 1950s and 1960s, has made no apologies for detaining people without trial.

"The power of preventive detention in the ISA is used when prosecution is not practical and the threat is real and must be dealt with," the government says in a pamphlet on the law.

The document also denies detainees are mistreated.

"A doctor examines detainees regularly. They are also examined before and after each time they are interviewed by the investigators in order to ensure their well-being."

The government also is adamant the ISA has contributed to what it rates as a highly successful campaign against JI, which was behind the Bali bomb blasts in October 2002 and is regarded as the major Southeast Asian affiliate of al-Qaeda.

"We have crippled the local Jemaah Islamiyah and Moro Islamic Liberation Front networks," Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said on Wednesday.
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