Alleged S’pore militant arrested in M’sia
The alleged leader of an Islamic militant group accused of plotting to crash an airliner in Singapore has been arrested in Malaysia after more than a year on the run.
Mas Selamat Kastari was caught on April 1 and has been held in custody by Malaysian authorities since then, Singapore’s Straits Times reported.
Security officials in both nations had no immediate comment to make on the reports.
Kastari is said to be head of the Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), an underground group linked to Al-Qaeda and blamed for the 2002 Bali bombing and other bloody attacks in Southeast Asia.
Singapore officials alleged he was part of a plot to hijack an airliner in Bangkok and crash it into Changi airport - one of Asia’s busiest - in 2001 following the September 11 attacks that year in the United States.
Now 48, he escaped from his high-security detention centre in Singapore on Feb 27 last year after squeezing through a toilet window that had no bars and climbing over a fence.
The Straits Times cited “senior intelligence sources” as saying Kastari was arrested on April 1 in Malaysia’s Johor state, which neighbours Singapore.
It is believed he is being held for interrogation by Malaysian authorities under its own internal security law, which also allows for detention without trial.
The newspaper said he was thought to have been in Johor all the time since his escape, and that his re-arrest followed a joint operation by Malaysian and Singaporean security agencies.
Kastari had fled Singapore in December 2001 following an Internal Security Department operation against Jemaah Islamiyah. He was arrested in Indonesia in 2006 and handed back.
His escape made the strict city-state an object of ridicule and triggered a sweeping review of security measures.
Nine officers and guards were penalised for lapses that allowed Kastari to escape. Two were sacked and three demoted, but calls for a high-level shake-up were ignored by the government.
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