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The Keystone Kops go to Singapore. "Agitated by one who got away," by Patrick Walters for The Australian:
It has sparked the biggest manhunt in Singapore's history and caused huge embarrassment to the country's usually super-efficient security agencies. Eleven days ago, Jemaah Islamiah leader Mas Selamat Kastari managed to give his guards the slip and vanished from Singapore's high-security Whitley Road detention centre.
Yesterday thousands of Singaporean police and defence personnel were still searching densely forested areas on the island for Mas Selamat. Patrol boats were plying the Johore Strait and the waterways leading to the neighbouring Indonesian island of Batam.
When he disappeared soon after 4pm on February 27, Mas Selamat, who walks with a pronounced limp, was due to meet his family at the detention centre where he had been held for the past two years. Singapore authorities won't say whether Mas Selamat scaled a fence or walked out through the front gates of the Whitley Road complex. Two official investigations, including an independent probe by a retired judge, have now been launched into the dramatic circumstances of his escape.
The official line is that Mas Selamat acted alone and is still at large on the island. But security experts say he would have needed only a couple of hours to get to Malaysia or to Batam with the aid of accomplices.
Mas Selamat's disappearance has thrown the spotlight back on JI in Southeast Asia and Singapore's handling of the threat posed by Islamic extremists. Before his arrest in Indonesia in 2006, Mas Selamat was a senior figure in JI who once considered flying a plane into Singapore's Changi airport.
According to Singapore authorities, he met al-Qa'ida's Southeast Asia chief Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, in 2001 at a crucial planning meeting which eventually led to the 2002 Bali bombings in which 88 Australians died. After spending time in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, Mas Selamat became the head of JI's Singapore cell and developed links with other JI leaders, including Noordin Mohamed Top, the organisation's bombing mastermind in Java.
Mas Selamat was interrogated by Indonesian police in 2002 but authorities had no knowledge then of his close involvement with JI. After being picked up in Indonesia two years ago, Mas Selamat was extradited to Singapore and detained under the country's wide-ranging Internal Security Act.
In January 2002, Singapore conducted the first big strike against JI when authorities swooped on the local JI cell, which had secretly planned to bomb Western embassies and attack Changi airport, and arrested 31 people. The Singapore operation was the first of dozens of counter-terrorism operations across Southeast Asia and Australia.
Six years later, Singapore government experts assert that JI's operations on the island state have been dismantled. A total of 28 JI members remain in detention and 31 have been released since the initial wave of arrests in 2002.
The biggest fear for Singapore's security agencies at home is the threat of self-radicalisation among the island's 400,000-strong Muslim population, with Islamist websites being a key motivator.
In late January, three young men were arrested in connection with suspected terrorist activity. This followed the June 2007 detention of lawyer Abdul Basheer Abdul Kader, who was allegedly influenced by extremist ideology via the internet.
The Singapore Government has invested heavily in building communal links with its large Muslim minority, which makes up about 14 per cent of the population. A Religious Rehabilitation Group consisting of respected Muslim clerics offers counselling services to JI detainees and their families. The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore has also opened a Harmony Centre in the city as a key educational tool to educate Singaporeans about the true tenets of Islam.
Mohammed Ali, a Muslim cleric and academic researcher, and one of the key figures in the rehabilitation of JI detainees, tells Inquirer that a lot of positive progress has been made in influencing hardline JI members away from their extremist views. More than 10 JI members have been released from detention since 2005 as a result of the efforts of the Muslim elders.
How sure are they that they won't see them again?
"You sit down one-on-one and listen to them and then identify how they have misinterpreted Koranic verses," Ali says. He warns that despite the obvious operational successes against JI and al-Qa'ida in recent years, the latter is still a formidable ideological tool when it comes to influencing younger generations of Muslims.
Posted by Marisol at March 8, 2008 12:19 AM
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Don't fret Marisol. If the escapee turns out to be a jihadist recidivist, they can always ship him out to the ultra-tough Saudi rehabilitation program, right?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017870.php
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at March 8, 2008 12:52 AM
From the article:
"You sit down one-on-one and listen to them and then identify how they have misinterpreted Koranic verses," Ali says. He warns that despite the obvious operational successes against JI and al-Qa'ida in recent years, the latter is still a formidable ideological tool when it comes to influencing younger generations of Muslims.
Excuse me, did he just say that Koranic verses are a formidable ideological tool that influence young jihadis? The Koran?
Maybe Ali wouldn't mind showing all of us "how they have misinterpreted Koranic verses". Why didn't anyone think of that? It's so simple. Maybe we can nip this whole jihad-thing in the bud.
Posted by: special_guest at March 8, 2008 1:31 AM
Singapore prison loses top jihadist
Marisol
The way you word it, one would think that this top jihadist was an asset to the Singapore jail, and that the jail losing him is like the Patriots losing the Super Bowl.
Good thing here is that they are trying to convince the Muslims that the Qur'an verses have been misinterpreted. I know about taquiyya artists, but I'd love to see those Muslim 'elders' teach that to the JI thugs with a straight face. And how do they account for the Sunnah - or do they convert them all to Shia Islam?
Posted by: Infidel Pride at March 8, 2008 2:24 AM
I don't believe it. Singapore doesn't just 'lose' a jihadist.
They let him go.
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at March 8, 2008 2:28 AM
Excuse me, did he just say that Koranic verses are a formidable ideological tool that influence young jihadis? The Koran?
[...]
Posted by: special_guest
--
I think that was supposed to read "satanic verses".
Posted by: Allah Schmallah at March 8, 2008 3:08 AM
Posted by: sheik yer'mami
I don't believe it. Singapore doesn't just 'lose' a jihadist. They let him go.
I believe so too, why throw out good cash feeding this piece of trash, next time we hear about him, will him being dragged out of a forest somewhere in the Philipines with his head blown off
Posted by: Shiva at March 8, 2008 7:54 AM
It's his duty to escape, and it is their duty to catch/kill him. Maybe it's a set up, but if they want him dead, something could be 'arranged' in prison...
Posted by: duh_swami at March 8, 2008 9:32 AM
The lesson of Gitmo is that one can kill or capture jihadis, but one cannot release them - unless they are shortly monitored followed and killed - because the recidivism rate is unacceptable.
Good luck Singapore.
Posted by: dgene at March 8, 2008 10:35 AM
Only Muslims receive this kind of special kid glove treatment from usually tough and efficient Singapore security services. Why? Fear. The tiny, superbly organized, economically thriving, sparkling clean country dependent on Arab oil imports is afraid of being targeted for retalliation by the huge Muslim world. Who can blame it if even the Big American Coward cowers before the Muslims, even sinking so low as to murder Serb Christians to plese the Muslims?
It is because of this special treatment. undoubtedly, that the jihadist escaped, probably aided by a Muslim traitor. The vermin betray the best country in the world for the Caliphate.
Singapore should learn, however, that appeasement only makes things worse, from the tragic example of nearby Thailand, and from even more tragic example of Serbia which went out of its way in the '60s, '70s and '80s trying to keep Kosovar Albanians happy with unlimited authonomy and generous government subsidies and affirmative action. And look at the evil the Kosovar Albanians did unto the Serbian Christians, with all-out backing of the US and EUrabia criminals.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.
Posted by: Enragedsince1999 at March 8, 2008 4:28 PM
"A Religious Rehabilitation Group consisting of respected Muslim clerics offers counselling services to JI detainees and their families."
Like everywhere else, the prison facilities in Signapore appear to be rife with Moslems that are not inmates, but "counselors," and "Islamic clerics" that tend to the Moslem inmates "spiritual needs," such as getting the hell out from custody to carry on the jihad that is the duty of every Moslem . . .
Posted by: unicorns62000 at March 8, 2008 5:08 PM
"how they have misinterpreted Koranic verses,"
Total BS. As Walid Shoebat has said, "What is it about Kill the Infidel you don't understand?"
It's like they think Westerners, who have invented everything in the world - hello - can't read!
Posted by: darcy at March 8, 2008 5:31 PM
Somebody needs a caning.
Posted by: profitsbeard at March 8, 2008 7:44 PM
I don't believe a middle-age limping man can vanish so easily out of a maximum security prison in Singapore (the official version had us believe that he "escaped during a toilet break"!). Singaporeans are very efficient at what they do, especially in matters of security and national defense. I believe he was probably died in prison (due to natural causes or otherwise) and Singapore government did not want to risk a backlash from its two large muslim neighbors, hence this official story line.
I guess they'd rather put up with international ridicule than having to risk terrorist acts committed by jihadists streaming out of the woodworks from Malaysia and Indonesia (not to mention from among their 14% muslim population) to avenge the death of one of their brothers. This tiny but rich country has so much to lose from a single terrorist incident.
at March 9, 2008 8:16 AM
How many Boy Friends do you think are disappointed he is gone?
Posted by: flowerknife_us at March 9, 2008 10:56 AM
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