SINGAPORE: Armed officers patrol a train station where television screens and giant posters warn of the threat from militants. Nearby, fake gunmen storm a shopping mall in one of many recent terror attack simulations.
But this is not some war-ravaged country. It is one of the safest in the world, Singapore.
The wealthy island-state has a near-perfect record of keeping its shores free from terror, but as it prepares to host defense ministers from around Southeast Asia this week, it appears to have good reason to have prioritized stopping the spread of militancy in the region.
The cosmopolitan financial hub, which was second only to Tokyo in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Safe Cities Index in 2017, says it has been the target of militant plots for years, some stemming from its Muslim-majority neighbors, and that it’s a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ militants will strike.
“Singapore continues to face a serious security threat from both homegrown radicalized individuals and foreign terrorists who continue to see Singapore as a prized target,” Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in response to emailed questions from Reuters.
Singapore authorities say they have been a target of extremism since the 1990s, but efforts to deter terrorism have stepped up markedly in recent years with more frequent attacks on Western countries and after Daesh militants briefly took over a town in the southern Philippines last year.
Raising further concerns about the threat to the island, a Singaporean soldier has featured on a number of Daesh promotional videos, most recently in December where he was filmed executing men alongside other militants.
In its inaugural Terrorism Threat Assessment Report released last year, the MHA said Daesh has demonstrated that Singapore is “very much on its radar” and that the threat to the country remains “the highest in recent years” — claims that are backed up by security experts.
“Singapore, being known as safe and secure, makes it such a risk target,” said Dan Bould, Asia director of crisis management at professional services firm Aon and a former captain in the British army.
“If there’s an attack in the Philippines, it may get half an hour in a 24-hour news cycle. An attack in Singapore with all the multicultural individuals operating here, will be within the narrative for a few days at least.”
In early 2017, Aon lifted Singapore in the terrorism and political violence category of its annual risk map from negligible to low risk.
Mobile app
The reality is that Singapore has so far escaped the attacks seen in other major world cities like New York, London and Berlin in recent years. That’s why it is at the bottom of the 2017 Global Terror Index, with no reported terror-related attacks post 9/11.
But three in four Singaporeans believe that it’s only a matter of time before the country experiences a terror attack, a poll by the local newspaper Sunday Times last year showed.
Singapore authorities certainly do not want their citizens to be complacent. Everyone, including school children, is encouraged to download a mobile app that alerts them to emergency situations and allows them to send in videos and photos of suspicious events.
The MHA said that as of the end of last year, more than 1.3 million devices were equipped with the SGSecure app, a large chunk of the population of around 5.6 million.
Simulations of terror attacks — including one just over a week ago where masked gunman stormed a children’s activity center on the resort island of Sentosa — are regular. Last month, Singapore’s military undertook its biggest mobilization exercise in more than three decades, including an inter-agency response to the simulation of a gunman at its national stadium.
Authorities said last year there was reliable information that IS militants were considering carrying out an attack in Singapore in the first half of 2016, a threat which they said was countered.
In August 2016, neighboring Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, arrested six suspects with links to IS who were accused of plotting rocket attacks on Singapore’s iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel.
Malaysia, Singapore’s northern neighbor which also has a Muslim-majority, and Indonesia say thousands of their citizens sympathize with IS and hundreds are believed to have traveled to Syria to join the group. Regional security officials say many are returning home after reverses in the Middle East.
Hard-line approach
Singapore takes a hard-line approach to suspected radicals and Bilveer Singh, an adjunct senior fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, says it is one of the reasons behind its success so far.
The most controversial measure at its disposal is its colonial-era Internal Security Act which allows for suspects to be held for lengthy periods without trial.
The MHA said it currently has 20 people detained under the Act for “terrorism-related” activities, and since 2002 has held close to 90 for such activities.
“ISA is a fantastic deterrent, and so far it has worked,” Singh said.
Authorities have also deported scores of foreigners for suspected radicalism in recent years, and in October banned two popular Muslim preachers from Zimbabwe and Malaysia from entering the city-state, saying their views bred intolerance and were a risk to its social harmony.
It’s when, not if: Singapore worries, and prepares, for militant attack
It’s when, not if: Singapore worries, and prepares, for militant attack
Cambodian sites of Khmer Rouge brutality added to UNESCO heritage list
- The three locations were inscribed to the list by the United Nations cultural agency on Friday
- The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site
The three locations were inscribed to the list by the United Nations cultural agency Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris.
The inscription coincided with the 50th anniversary of the rise to power by the communist Khmer Rouge government, which caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians through starvation, torture and mass executions during a four-year reign from 1975 to 1979.
UNESCO’s World Heritage List lists sites considered important to humanity and includes the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and Cambodia’s Angkor archaeological complex.
The three sites listed Friday include two notorious prisons and an execution site immortalized in a Hollywood film.
Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, located in the capital Phnom Penh, is the site of a former high school used by the Khmer Rouge as a notorious prison. Better known as S-21, about 15,000 people were imprisoned and tortured there.
The M-13 prison, located in rural Kampong Chhnang province in central Cambodia, also was regarded as one of the main prisons of the early Khmer Rouge.
Choeung Ek, located about 15 kilometers south of the capital, was used as an execution site and mass grave. The story of the atrocities committed there are the focus of the 1984 film “The Killing Fields,” based on the experiences of New York Times photojournalist Dith Pran and correspondent Sydney Schanberg.
The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, and immediately herded almost all the city’s residents into the countryside, where they were forced to toil in harsh conditions until 1979, when the regime was driven from power by an invasion from neighboring Vietnam.
In September 2022, the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, better known as the Khmer Rouge tribunal, concluded its work compiling cases against Khmer Rouge leaders. The tribunal cost $337 million over 16 years but convicted just three men.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet issued a message Friday directing people to beat drums simultaneously across the country Sunday morning to mark the UNESCO listing.
“May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended,” Hun Manet said in a video message posted online. “From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.”
Youk Chhang, executive director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, said the country is “still grappling with the painful legacies of genocide, torture, and mass atrocity.” But naming the three sites to the UNESCO list will play a role in educating younger generations of Cambodians and others worldwide.
“Though they were the landscape of violence, they too will and can contribute to heal the wounds inflicted during that era that have yet to heal,” he said.
The UNESCO inscription was Cambodia’s first nomination for a modern and non-classical archaeological site and is among the first in the world to be submitted as a site associated with recent conflict, Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said in a statement Friday.
Four Cambodian archaeological sites were previously inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites including Angkor, Preah Vihear, Sambo Prei Kuk and Koh Ker, the ministry said.
Colombian authorities arrest alleged leader of Italian mafia in Latin America
- Italian Giuseppe Palermo, also known as ‘Peppe,’ was wanted under an Interpol red notice, which called for his arrest in 196 countries
- He was apprehended on the street in Colombia’s capital Bogota during a coordinated operation
BOGOTA: Colombian authorities said Friday they captured an alleged leader of the Italian ‘ndrangheta mafia in Latin America who is accused of overseeing cocaine shipments and managing illegal trafficking routes to Europe.
Police identified the suspect as Giuseppe Palermo, also known as “Peppe,” an Italian who was wanted under an Interpol red notice, which called for his arrest in 196 countries.
He was apprehended on the street in Colombia’s capital Bogota during a coordinated operation between Colombian, Italian and British authorities, as well as Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, according to an official report.
Palermo is believed to be part of “one of the most tightly knit cells” of the ‘ndrangheta mafia, said Carlos Fernando Triana, head of the Colombian police, in a message posted on X.
The ‘ndrangheta, one of Italy’s most powerful and secretive criminal organizations, has extended its influence abroad and is widely accused of importing cocaine into Europe.
The suspect “not only led the purchase of large shipments of cocaine in Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, but also controlled the maritime and land routes used to transport the drugs to European markets,” Triana added.
Illegal cocaine production reached 3,708 tons in 2023, an increase of nearly 34 percent from the previous year, driven mainly by the expansion of coca leaf cultivation in Colombia, according to the United Nations.
US appeals court scraps 9/11 mastermind’s plea deal
- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was regarded as one of bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants
- He had spent three years in secret CIA prisons before arriving at Guantanamo in 2006
WASHINGTON: A US appeals court on Friday scrapped 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s plea agreement that would have taken the death penalty off the table and helped conclude the long-running legal saga surrounding his case.
The agreement had sparked anger among some relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks, and then-US defense secretary Lloyd Austin moved to cancel it last year, saying that both they and the American public deserved to see the defendants stand trial.
Austin “acted within the bounds of his legal authority, and we decline to second-guess his judgment,” judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao wrote.
Plea deals with Mohammed as well as two alleged accomplices — Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Al-Hawsawi — were announced in late July last year.
The decision appeared to have moved their cases toward resolution after years of being bogged down in pre-trial maneuverings while the defendants remained held at the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba.
But Austin withdrew the agreements two days after they were announced, saying the decision should be up to him, given its significance.
He subsequently said that “the families of the victims, our service members and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military commission trials carried out in this case.”
A military judge ruled in November that the deals were valid and binding, but the government appealed that decision.
The appeals court judges on Friday vacated “the military judge’s order of November 6, 2024, preventing the secretary of defense’s withdrawal from the pretrial agreements.”
And they prohibited the military judge “from conducting hearings in which respondents would enter guilty pleas or take any other action pursuant to the withdrawn pretrial agreements.”
Much of the legal jousting surrounding the 9/11 defendants’ cases has focused on whether they could be tried fairly after having undergone torture at the hands of the CIA — a thorny issue that the plea agreements would have avoided.
Mohammed was regarded as one of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants before his March 2003 capture in Pakistan. He then spent three years in secret CIA prisons before arriving at Guantanamo in 2006.
The trained engineer — who has said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks “from A to Z” — was involved in a string of major plots against the United States, where he attended university.
The United States used Guantanamo, an isolated naval base, to hold militants captured during the “War on Terror” that followed the September 11 attacks in a bid to keep the defendants from claiming rights under US law.
The facility held roughly 800 prisoners at its peak, but they have since slowly been sent to other countries. A small fraction of that number remains.
Fuel to Air India plane was cut off moments before crash, investigation report says
- Report also indicated that both pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting, which caused a loss of engine thrust shortly after takeoff
- The Air India flight crashed on June 12 and killed at least 260 people, including 19 on the ground, in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad
NEW DELHI: Fuel control switches for the engines of an Air India flight that crashed last month were moved from the “run” to the “cutoff” position moments before impact, starving both engines of fuel, a preliminary investigation report said early Saturday.
The report, issued by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, also indicated that both pilots were confused over the change to the switch setting, which caused a loss of engine thrust shortly after takeoff.
The Air India flight – a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner – crashed on June 12 and killed at least 260 people, including 19 on the ground, in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad. Only one passenger survived the crash, which is one of India’s worst aviation disasters.
The plane was carrying 230 passengers – 169 Indians, 53 British, seven Portuguese and a Canadian – along with 12 crew members.
According to the report, the flight lasted around 30 seconds between takeoff and crash. It said that once the aircraft achieved its top recorded speed, “the Engine 1 and Engine 2 fuel cutoff switches transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one after another” within a second. The report did not say how the switches could have flipped to the cutoff position during the flight.
The movement of the fuel control switches allow and cut fuel flow to the plane’s engines.
The switches were flipped back into the run position, the report said, but the plane could not gain power quickly enough to stop its descent after the aircraft had begun to lose altitude.
“One of the pilots transmitted “‘MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY’,” the report said.
It also indicated confusion in the cockpit moments before the crash.
In the flight’s final moment, one pilot was heard on the cockpit voice recorder asking the other why he cut off the fuel. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so,” the report said.
The plane’s black boxes – combined cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders – were recovered in the days following the crash and later downloaded in India.
Indian authorities had also ordered deeper checks of Air India’s entire fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliner to prevent future incidents. Air India has 33 Dreamliners in its fleet.
Memorial in flood-ravaged Texas city becomes focal point of community’s grief
- Brooklyn Thomas, a Kerrville native, stopped by the memorial to affix flowers near a photograph of a high school friend who died in the flood
- On Friday night, a week after the flood hit, a vigil was held to honor those that died
KERRVILLE: A chain-link fence that separates Water Street in the center of Kerrville from the Guadalupe River just a few hundred feet away has become a makeshift memorial, with the flower-covered stretch serving as a focal point for a grieving community.
As survivors in hard-hit Kerr County begin to bury their dead, the memorial has grown, covered with laminated photographs of victims of last-week’s deadly flood that roared through camps and homes, killing at least 120 people.
“I just feel like this is a beautiful remembrance of the individuals that were lost here,” said Brooklyn Thomas, 27, who graduated from high school in Kerrville with Julian Ryan, a resident of nearby Ingram who died in the flood trying to save his family. “I think it’s something really cool for the community to come to see, to remember their loved ones, to share memories if they want to.”
Thomas and her family affixed flowers to the wall near a picture of Ryan. The smell of fresh-cut flowers hung in the air as people placed candles and other mementos along the sidewalk next to the fence. Signs hanging from the fence read “Hill Country Strong” and featured an outline of Texas filled with rolling green hills. A large Texas flag stood on one end of the memorial, flapping in the breeze.
Debi Leos, who grew up in the Hill Country town of Junction, said she stopped by the memorial to leave flowers in honor of Richard “Dick” Eastland, the beloved director of Camp Mystic who died trying to save some of the young girls at his camp.
“Hill Country is near and dear to me, and we came down here to pay our respects,” Leos said. “As a parent, I can only imagine what the families are going through.”
Friday evening, about 300 people showed up at the memorial for a vigil with speakers that included faith leaders and some who told harrowing tales of narrowly escaping the flood.
Michelle McGuire said she woke up July 4 at her apartment in Hunt, Texas, to find her bed and nightstand floating and quickly found herself in deep flood waters, clinging to a tree for life.
“Thank God I’m a good swimmer,” she said. “I didn’t want my mom to have to bury me.”
Marc Steele, bishop-elect of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, said the memorial has become a place where people of all different faiths and backgrounds can come together and share their grief.
“We like to take opportunities like this to come together and pray to God,” Steele said, “and also Sunday mornings we come together and worship in prayer for our sorrow and thanksgiving for lives that were saved.”
