Singapore said yesterday it had sent a security team to Jakarta to discuss Indonesian police findings that the city-state could have been the target of a terror attack plot.
The Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs said the team from the Internal Security Department was in talks with the Indonesian police about the findings, which included a map of Singapore’s train network discovered in the home of Ahmad Sayid Maulana, a terror suspect killed last week.
The Straits Times newspaper said the underground train station on Singapore’s Orchard Road shopping belt — frequented by foreign tourists, expatriate workers and locals — had been circled on the map.
It also quoted an unnamed Indonesian police investigator as saying that Singapore “obviously” was a target of an attack and that the suspects had planned to enter the city-state via Malaysia.
“We are aware of the items recovered and the speculations and possibilities that the terrorists could have been planning an attack against Singapore and we are investigating,” a Ministry of Home Affairs spokeswoman said.
“We should also keep in mind that Singapore has been and remains a target for terrorists and we must always maintain our vigilance,” she said.
The Internal Security Department handles security threats from “international terrorism, foreign subversion and espionage,” its Web site says.
Maulana had been identified in an International Crisis Group report last month as a suspect who had planned attacks on police headquarters in Jakarta and surveyed sites for militant training camps in Indonesia.
The Straits Times said the 36-year-old was shot dead by Indonesia’s elite anti-terror squad Detachment 88 during a raid in East Jakarta on May 12.
A map of an airport in the city of General Santos in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao was also among the items found in Maulana’s house, the report said.
John Harrison, a security analyst at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the-city state was a prime target chiefly because it is an ally of Western countries.
“Certainly, Singapore remains a tier one target for the JI [Jemaah Islamiyah terror network],” he said.
“It’s because of Singapore’s position as an ally of the United States and other Western nations,” he said.
“You have a concentration of Western interests,” he said, pointing to the numerous multinational corporations based in the city-state as well as foreign embassies.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on Monday met virtually with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) and raised concerns about “malicious cyber activity” carried out by Chinese state-sponsored actors, the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement. The department last month reported that an unspecified number of its computers had been compromised by Chinese hackers in what it called a “major incident” following a breach at contractor BeyondTrust, which provides cybersecurity services. US Congressional aides said no date had been set yet for a requested briefing on the breach, the latest in a serious of cyberattacks
RSS