BEIJING -- Malaysia's prime minister praised President Barack Obama on Wednesday for moving to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay but urged him to speed up the process of relocating the detainees.

Malaysia is seeking the return of two of its citizens held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo since September 2006, when they were transferred there from secret CIA prisons.

''It is to Obama's credit [that] he has come out to say he is going to close down [the prison camps] . . . but he has not followed that up with what he is going to do with the inmates,'' said Prime Minister Najib Razak said Wednesday during a visit to Beijing.

A day earlier the detention center revealed that a Yemeni detainee was found dead in his cell of apparent suicide.

Najib described the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo as ''horrific,'' while also defending an anti-terrorism law in his country that allows for detention without trial. He said the Internal Security Act has effectively prevented attacks and ``saved countless lives.''

Malaysia's Internal Security Act, or ISA, has been mostly used to hold terrorism suspects but critics say it also targets political opponents. Najib has called for a review of the law to make its use more open and transparent.

''How we treat ISA detainees is really a walk in the park compared to Guantánamo Bay,'' he said. ``Guantánamo Bay has been quite a horrific way of treating individuals who many believe happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. There are of course very hardened extremists there as well. It's a mixed bag.''

The two Malaysians -- Mohd Farik Bin Amin, better known as Zubair, and Mohammed Nazir Bin Lep, also known as Lillie -- are so-called high-value detainees at Guantánamo. They were captured separately in Thailand in 2003 and have undergone U.S. military hearings to affirm their status as ''enemy combatants'' eligible for military trials.

Mohd Farik allegedly helped the Southeast Asian terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah's operational planner case targets for potential attacks. He is believed to have been tapped to be a suicide operative for an al Qaeda attack on Los Angeles, which was foiled.

Mohammed Nazir allegedly helped transfer funds from al Qaeda to Jemaah Islamiyah, some of which was used for operational expenses in a 2003 car bombing at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia that killed 12 people.

Najib gave no specifics about the plots the ISA had allegedly prevented in Malaysia, but he compared them to attacks successfully carried out by terrorists in Indonesia. A 2002 bombing on Indonesia's resort island of Bali killed 202 people.

''If not for the ISA . . . there would have been terrorist incidents in Malaysia,'' he said. ``We were able to nip it in the bud and in the process we were able to save lives, countless lives.''

AP-ES-06-03-09 1255EDT

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