KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's High Court is expected to deliver its verdict in a treason trial on Thursday which could result in hanging sentences for members of a shadowy Muslim cult accused of armed insurrection.
Eighteen members of the Al-Ma'unah group, arrested after a showdown in the jungle in the middle of last year stand accused of waging war against the king -- Malaysia's constitutional head.
The climax of the 125-day trial comes just days after Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad issued an ominous Christmas message warning of foreign and local agitators seeking to destabilise this multi-cultural country.
A newspaper also said on Tuesday police had uncovered a plot to kill Mahathir, but both the prime minister and the police brushed off the report.
Sentencing, if the Al-Ma'unah members are found guilty on Thursday, could be decided later, lawyers told Reuters.
The judge could hand down the death penalty or life imprisonment to Al-Ma'unah leader Mohamed Amin Razali and his followers, who believed mystical powers protected them from harm.
A senior police source said the Mahathir assassination plot story, carried in the Sun daily, referred to an old rumour.
The source told Reuters the rumour was checked out a year ago and while nothing came of it intelligence and security around Mahathir, Asia's longest serving elected leader, was stepped up.
Even before September 11, Mahathir was cracking down on suspected Muslim militants, detaining without trial several members of the leading Islamic opposition party last August.
Malaysia is seen to be stable in a region often beset by political turmoil, and the emergence of the hitherto unheard of Muslim Al-Ma'unah cult was seen as an isolated episode.
Any hint of racial or religious extremism is highly sensitive in Malaysia, where two-thirds of the 23 million population are Muslim Malays and other indigenous people, while the Chinese and Indian minorities account for the other third.
Al-Ma'unah described itself as a self-defence army for suppressed Muslims, whose fighters possessed powers to stun opponents without touching them.
In July last year, members of the group posing as senior army officers talked their way into two army camps and carted away more than 100 rifles, thousands of bullets and explosives.
The gang later took four hostages, and killed two before surrendering after a five-day stand-off with security forces in the jungles of northern Perak state.
Ten members of the group were sentenced early last year to 10 years in jail after the prosecution amended the charges against them to a lesser one of preparing to wage war.