How to Catch a Terrorist

He wore only an undershirt and khaki shorts, and all that he would say when he wandered into the police station in a tiny village in Johore one day last April was: "I am a terrorist and I want to surrender." The young constable in charge was not overly impressed. All the same, he bundled his unexpected guest into a Land Rover and turned him over to his superiors in Segamat. There, incredulous officials questioned the prisoner for hours on end, laid every kind of verbal trap to see if he really was the man he claimed to be. Sure enough, he was none other than Hor Lung, the leading Communist terrorist in South Malaya, and the last man the government thought would ever surrender.

A dedicated Communist since 1940, Hor Lung, 52, got his guerrilla training early in World War II at a special British school in Singapore. He commanded the Communists' daringly successful "3rd Independent Force" during the Japanese occupation, after the war turned the regiment against the British. By 1953, he had only one superior among the Communists of the south--a terrorist named Ah Kuk, and known as "Shorty." Shorty's own bodyguards soon took care of that. Learning that there was $66,000 on their master's head, they decided to deliver that head--minus the body--to the police. After that, Hor Lung was in complete command of scores of villages in Johore.

Last year, relentlessly battered by Malayan and Commonwealth troops, Hor Lung began to retreat deeper and deeper into the jungle. He drove his men mercilessly, refused to be stopped by mounting casualties or dwindling food supplies, seemed determined never to be conquered. Then one day he simply wandered away, stripped off his uniform and headed for the police. Fearing that the news of his surrender might somehow imperil their efforts to persuade other terrorists to give up, government officials kept it a secret. Only last week, on the eve of Malaya's first anniversary of independence, did they let the story out.

The news came as the climax to a year that had seen 695 terrorists killed, captured or cajoled into surrender, leaving only an estimated 600 guerrillas in the jungles after ten years of guerrilla war. In flushing the terrorists out, the government had resorted to an extraordinary tactic. "If money can buy the end of the emergency," said Prime Minister Tengku (Prince) Abdul Rahman last week, "we will buy it. We cannot stick to principles; if we did, Hor Lung should really be hanged." Instead of hangings, the terrorists have the offer of substantial rewards for surrendering, and for going back into the jungle to spot other guerrillas. So far, the government has paid out $165,000 in such rewards, chicken feed beside the peak $87,600,000 that the British spent one year fighting the guerrillas. Even Hor Lung had apparently found a little bribery--rumored to be $50,000--irresistible. "He is." admitted the Prime Minister, "now richer than any of us."

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