KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia has started documenting and screening thousands of detained Myanmar nationals as part of a repatriation program agreed with Myanmar, Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution said Thursday.
Saifuddin said Myanmar had committed to accept up to 5,000 of its citizens currently living in Malaysia and an unspecified number currently in Cox’s Bazar, a town in south east Bangladesh.
Malaysia had identified up to 4,000 Myanmar nationals in its 19 detention depots, who will be moved to a single site for security screening and documentation purposes, he said.
“We will certainly meet the target of 5,000 individuals once this process is complete,” Saifuddin told to reporters, adding that the foreign ministry will handle the next stage of the repatriation process with Myanmar.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had said Wednesday that those being repatriated were Rohingya refugees.
“People ask why we do not simply send them back. Send them where? Myanmar had refused to accept them before. Now, because of our good relations with Myanmar, they have agreed to take back 5,000 from Malaysia,” Anwar was cited as saying by the New Straits Times.
However, Saifuddin, who did not explicitly identify the 5,000 individuals as Rohingya, said only Myanmar nationals with refugee status were being repatriated.
Foreign ministry officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, a commissioner for refugee, relief and repatriation in Cox’s Bazar, told The Associated Press by phone that he was not aware of any repatriation of Rohingya from Bangladesh.
In Naypyitaw, the capital of Myanmar, officials also rejected reports that the government would accept Rohingyas.
Han Win Aung, director-general of the ASEAN department at Myanmar’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, said the repatriation program was focused solely on verified Myanmar nationals currently held in detention centers in Malaysia.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, does not recognize the Rohingya as one of the country’s 135 lawful ethnic minorities, instead referring to them as Bengalis to imply they are natives from Bangladesh and are illegally settled in Myanmar.
“This is not about bringing back Bengalis. There are Myanmar nationals who are being held in detention centers in Malaysia for various reasons,” Han Win Aung told the AP. “Both sides are still at the stage of coordinating to repatriate only those whose identity as genuine Myanmar citizens has been verified.”
He said the plan follows earlier repatriation operations in 2021 and 2022, when Myanmar received more than 1,100 of its nationals stranded in Malaysia.
Han Win Aung said the number of people to be repatriated and the timeline for transfer remain under discussion.
Malaysia is home to about 215,600 refugees and asylum seekers registered with the U.N. refugee agency, including about 126,000 Rohingya who make up one of Southeast Asia's largest refugee community. Despite hosting them, Malaysia is not a party to the U.N. Refugee Convention and treats refugees as undocumented migrants.
Journalists Julhas Alam in Bangladesh and Grant Peck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
FILE - Illegal immigrants from Myanmar rest at a temporary immigration detention center in Langkawi, Malaysia on May 12, 2015. (AP Photo/Vincent Thian)
PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — The two police officers focused first on Lindsay Clancy drifting in and out of consciousness in the snow after jumping from her second-floor window of her Massachusetts home. Within minutes, they were racing into the basement after her then-husband screamed that all three of their children were dead.
“I can’t wake them up — I can’t get them up!” he frantically told the officers who on Thursday, along with firefighters and paramedics, gave jurors firsthand accounts of the aftermath.
The murder trial has centered on Clancy’s mental state at the time. Her lawyers do not dispute that she strangled the children with exercise bands. But they say she was in the grip of postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.
Prosecutors say Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, acted intentionally and is criminally responsible for the deaths in January 2023.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org
The testimony came after jurors spent two days listening to testimony from Patrick Clancy and his anguished 911 call. He was still on the phone when he discovered the bodies of 3-year-old Dawson, 5-year-old Cora, and 8-month-old Callan, minutes after returning home from an errand his wife asked him to run.
Patrick Clancy has said in interviews that he forgives his ex-wife, whom he viewed as ill rather than evil. The trial marks the first time he has seen Lindsay Clancy since the killings.
She remains paralyzed from the waist down after using multiple methods to try to end her life that night. She says a voice told her, “This is your last chance. Kill the children so you can kill yourself,” according to her lawyer.
Officers Stephen Hall and Brian Josephine testified Thursday that they were each dispatched separately to the house in Duxbury, a coastal town south of Boston. Hall said they arrived to find Patrick Clancy yelling for help from behind the home.
Patrick Clancy testified earlier this week that his wife told him the kids were in the basement, but she didn't say they were dead.
When the officers followed the sound of his screams downstairs, only 8-month-old Callan had a faint pulse, Josephine testified.
“Based on my training experience from previous incidents, I knew it wasn’t going to be good,” Josephine said. They began rendering aid with help from firefighters.
PJ Hussey, a fire department supervisor, arrived in time to glimpse through a basement window as Patrick Clancy tried to remove an exercise band from his child's neck.
“It turned very chaotic very quickly” as more ambulances rushed to the house, Hussey testified. Duxbury firefighter and paramedic Jennifer Stratton said the infant never regained a pulse.
If convicted of murder, she faces life in prison without parole. If found not guilty due to a lack of criminal responsibility, she would be committed to a state mental health facility.
In opening arguments Monday, Lindsay Clancy's attorney said that she had bipolar disorder, and that antidepressants prescribed after the birth of her third child worsened her condition.
Patrick Clancy testified about his wife’s deteriorating mental health in the months leading up to the killings. He said she told him about intrusive thoughts of harming the children and thoughts of suicide.
Lindsay Clancy had sought care from experts in postpartum mood disorders, was put on multiple psychiatric medications, and when nothing worked, checked in to a psychiatric hospital. She killed the children 19 days after she was discharged.
Clancy and her ex-husband accuse her medical providers of failing to properly diagnose, treat and monitor her, according to lawsuits filed earlier this year.
Lindsay Clancy waits for the judge to call a prospective jury member into court in her murder trial where she is charged in the 2023 killing of her three children, Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass. (Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger via AP, Pool)
Defense attorney Kevin Reddington and Lindsay Clancy listen to the 911 recording from Jan. 24, 2023, during Clancy's murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
Patrick Clancy sits on the stand during the Lindsay Clancy murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
Lindsay Clancy attends her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court in Plymouth, Mass., on Wednesday, July 29, 2026. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via AP, Pool)
