Singapore detains teenager for planning terror attack on non-Muslims

Singapore: Singapore has detained a 17-year-old self-radicalised supporter of terror group ISIS under the Internal Security Act (ISA) mere weeks before his planned attack on non-Muslim males in a public housing estate.

The teenager, purportedly influenced by the ongoing Hamas strikes and developments around Syria, wanted to use either a kitchen knife or a pair of scissors from his home as his weapon, said the Internal Security Department (ISD) in a press release on Friday.

It was a "very close shave as he could have easily gone on a rampage”, Singapore's Minister for Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam said.

"I would say this is one of the ones where it was quite close, fairly close," Shanmugam said on the duration between the teen's arrest and the planned attack.

Shanmugam pointed out that the area that the teen had intended for the attack was frequented by "thousands of people" every day, including senior citizens and young children, and that it would be even more crowded during the school holidays being a main housing estate area with shopping malls and leisure facilities.

Since 2020, the ISD has detained five self-radicalised youths who wanted to carry out attacks in Singapore using such easily accessible weapons. Such attacks require little time and preparation to execute, said the department.

In this particular case, the youth was determined to follow through with his plan and was less than a month away from executing it at the time of his arrest in August, it added.

He had planned to attack non-Muslim males near Tampines West Community Centre, during the school holidays in September. Following his arrest, the teenager was issued a two-year detention order in September as well, the Channel News Asia reported on Friday.

The youth chose the Tampines location as it was crowded and within walking distance from his home, said the ISD. Tampines is one of the major housing estates built, owned and managed by the state-agency Housing Board.

He also took "concrete steps" to prepare himself for the attack, the agency added. A knife or scissors was his weapon of choice because he felt he could wield them effectively and inflict "maximum damage" on his targets.

"To ensure that he could kill or grievously wound his targets, he planned to stab them in the neck, and practised stabbing motions using different grips with the scissors," said the ISD.

In June, he conducted a walkthrough of the route he would take from his house to execute the attack. The ISD added that the youth was determined to be killed by the police or passers-by in the course of his attack, as this would fulfil his aspiration to become a “martyr”.

"He felt a sense of pride knowing that his planned attack if successfully executed would be the first terrorist attack in Singapore in recent decades," the release said.

He crafted a declaration of armed jihad or struggle against non-Muslims, which he planned to release before his attack in the "hope of inspiring other Muslims to engage in armed violence", the ISD said.

The ISD said the student became exposed to the teachings of foreign radical preachers in August 2023 while searching for religious knowledge online.

The attacks by the Hamas militant group against Israel on October 7, 2023, led to a surge in online extremist materials by Islamic State and other terrorist groups, seeking to capitalise on the conflict to peddle their violent narratives, the ISD said.

The youth’s exposure to the pro-Islamic State material online led him down the path of radicalisation, it added.

He then joined various online groups which gave updates on Islamic State's activities and bought into its rhetoric of promoting the use of armed violence to establish an Islamic caliphate. By January, the youth was aspiring to die as a martyr while fighting for the Islamic State, the ISD said.

In May, after taking a pledge of allegiance to the group, he regarded himself as a member and was willing to carry out any instructions from them – including mounting attacks, the ISD added.