JI Leader Mas Selamat Escaped From Detention Centre
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You got a good point... it is time for the PM to show some figurehead roles and show his face and say something...
It doesn't matter whether what he say will 'help' the situation or not... if this is something that concern singaporeans... and with almost the entire country mobilized to track the fugitive down, surely this merit a crisis??
Shouldn't he come out and show some leadership?
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Originally posted by noahnoah:
this guy really given to us a lot of problem
everywhere i go see his face
sibi sian arrrrrr
Why is he playing hide and seek for so long
???
Ya everywhere i go to, his posters are everywhere. Most recognizable face.
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waste a lot of money in printing posters
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it's no longer front page news .... infact .... it's not even in the straits times at all, except for a short little write up about how the long distance truckers are suffering at the checkpoints ......
they are holding up a broom and one end of the carpet now .....
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i knew it, the news will died down and everyone will forget abt this...
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Originally posted by Dead_Man_Inc:
i knew it, the news will died down and everyone will forget abt this...
until, perhaps, the fellow blows up a bomb in Singapore somewhere ....
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Originally posted by Dead_Man_Inc:
i knew it, the news will died down and everyone will forget abt this...
well, the action is at the causeway and tuas link. look at that jam. -
I'm not defending the media but there is a good reason why they don't want to give this much attention and publicity.
Tourism revenue = 1 million per hour
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Anyway Singaporeans do have short memories and by mid April you guys wont even remember the name Selamat....well,at least until the next Hari Raya.
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Originally posted by fai:
I'm not defending the media but there is a good reason why they don't want to give this much attention and publicity.
Tourism revenue = 1 million per hour
I'm not trying to be cynical here ..... but I think this is really about "face" ....
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... as the days pass, I feel more certain that he must have been killed / murdered under ISD custody, and this is one MAJOR FARCE of a Cover Up... again, at the costs of the people...
... to date, we heard nothing about his family or what they have to say... and we certainly don't know how they were treated or what they were told by ISD that they are so so QUIET....
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Originally posted by Gimme m0re:
haha...ya...even coffee shop...
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Originally posted by HyperFocal:
... as the days pass, I feel more certain that he must have been killed / murdered under ISD custody, and this is one MAJOR FARCE of a Cover Up... again, at the costs of the people...
... to date, we heard nothing about his family or what they have to say... and we certainly don't know how they were treated or what they were told by ISD that they are so so QUIET....
no, he's gone ... it would have been a lot simpler to say that he died of natural causes, say, a heart attack, or some unknown thingy, right ? ..... this conspiracy theory is simply too far fetched .....
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Escape has yet to dent govt’s hubris
Posted by theonlinecitizen on March 6, 2008
By Gerald Giam
While in a cab last Saturday, I recalled the newspapers reporting that within hours of alleged Jemaah Islamiah leader Mas Selamat Kastari’s escape from detention, a broadcast was sent to all taxis urging them to look out for the escaped terrorist. Wanting to verify this, I asked the cabby when exactly he received that broadcast.
“They didn’t tell us until the next day!” he replied in Mandarin. “And after making such a big blunder, what’s the point of apologising?”, he continued, ending off with, “Ta ma de!” which loosely translates to “Damn it!” in English.
With just that innocent question, I had not expected to ignite such anger in that otherwise polite taxi driver. It was then I realised that I was not alone in feeling upset at the fact that the government allowed a potentially dangerous man to slip away so easily from detention last Wednesday afternoon. An AFP report published by The Straits Times (2 March) reported that the government has come under unusually “stinging public criticism” after the escape.
But to err is human. And government officials are human after all, aren’t they? So why engage in this “unconstructive and retrospective finger-pointing”, as two NTU academics wrote in TODAY (4 March)? Shouldn’t we “rally behind and support our security forces and not undermine them,” as Mr Nicholas Lazarus advised me in a comment on my blog last Friday?
On deeper analysis, it appears that Singaporeans’ anger at the government is not simply because a bunch of bumbling Internal Security Department (ISD) officials at the Whitley Road Detention Centre let slip the alleged leader of JI Singapore.
It is not because Singapore has been in the international spotlight for all the wrong reasons. It is not even because after more than a week, one thousand police officers and army personnel still haven’t been able to find a limping man in this little red dot of an island.
I suspect that Singaporeans are more upset with the insufferable hubris and lack of transparency of the government despite what is probably their biggest blunder in recent memory.
Mr Tan Chak Lim put it this way in a letter to TODAY (1 March):
“When we hear of dangerous prisoners escaping from prison in Indonesia or the Philippines, we congratulate ourselves that such things can’t possibly happen in Singapore. The escape of Mas Selamat should check any hubristic tendencies on our part.”
Hubristic tendencies? Didn’t the Deputy Prime Minister apologise in Parliament for the “lapse in security”? Wasn’t that a sincere enough display of contrition for someone as high and mighty as Mr Wong Kan Seng?
The behaviour of senior government officials in the wake of the escape suggests that these hubristic tendencies are still as strong as ever.
It took four long hours for the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to inform the public that Mas Selamat had escaped? PAP Member of Parliament Dr Teo Ho Pin asked the right question the next day in Parliament: Why so long?
The Minister’s answer? He posed “no imminent danger to the public” and he was “not known to be armed”. The police on Sunday said that they did not want to cause “public panic”.
Does the Minister really think Singaporeans are so irrational? If he is not armed and dangerous, why should Singaporeans panic if the police sounded the alarm immediately?
The public could have helped police nab the man in those crucial four hours.
In fact at about 5.15pm, 70 minutes after the escape, a bus commuter reported seeing a man, believed to be Mas Selamat, at a petrol kiosk near the detention centre. A manager of a car washing kiosk at the Esso petrol station on Whitley Road reported seeing a man struggling up a flight of stairs towards Malcolm Park at 5pm. If these people had been informed of Mas Selamat’s escape, they would have called the police immediately instead of speaking to the press only a day later.
As student Lee Weijia pointed out in a letter to the Straits Times, “the authorities were hoping to apprehend him without alerting the public. It seems that the public was only alerted when the authorities recognised the fact that Mas Selamat could not be apprehended any time soon.”
Lee went on to ask a very pertinent question: If Mas Selamat had been apprehended within the four hours, would this have been reported and made known to the public at all?
“We should not speculate”
The question that every Singaporean must have asked in the immediate wake of the escape was, “How could this have happened in Singapore?”
Every Singaporean, that is, except our local mainstream media journalists and editors.
As NTU don Cherian George pointed out, neither The Straits Times, nor Channel NewsAsia, nor TODAY asked that question within the first 24 hours of the news breaking. This led Dr George to conclude that the editors “must have been instructed not to raise the ‘how’ question publicly”.
Indeed, the Home Affairs minister had told Parliament immediately after his apology, that, “An independent investigation is underway. We should not speculate now. Security at the centre has been stepped up.”
How can the minister tell Singaporeans not to speculate when such a costly mistake has just been committed? Is there a presumption that the government is above public scrutiny?
Suffered a “knock” but we’re still better than others
On Sunday, the Home Affairs minister acknowledged that Singapore’s reputation for safety and security had “suffered a knock somewhat”.
Was it just a “knock”?
The news of the escape was reported the world over by major news agencies and dailies like AFP, CNN, BBC, New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, Xinhua, Hindustan Times, Washington Post, Sydney Morning Herald, Al Jazeera and Taipei Times, just to name a few.
They featured unflattering headlines like “A Jihadi Limps Away from Singapore Jail”, “Singapore: Terror suspect fled toilet” and “Embarrassed Singapore hunts escaped terrorist”.
NTU academics Hoo Tiang Boon and Kumar Ramakrishna assessed that Mas Selamat’s escape is likely to have “wide repercussions, strategically and operationally” and that other terrorists might use this story for the own recruitment and indoctrination purposes.
The Minister went on to boast that “our reputation continues to remain high compared to many other countries”. Indeed, what better way to prop oneself up than to put others down, by implying that “other countries” (read: Indonesia, Philippines, etc) still pale in comparison to us! Even if it is true, this is hardly the time to say so.
Responding in kind, the Indonesians later stated that while they are helping in the search for Mas Selamat, if they catch him, they are not going to extradite him to Singapore for the second time, because the Singapore-Indonesia Extradition Treaty has not been ratified.
See where this hubris has gotten us?
Singaporeans fed dribs and drabs of information
Last Friday, I asked on my blog why the police had not told the public what Mas Selamat was wearing when he escaped. On Tuesday, almost a week after the escape, the police finally revealed that he could have been wearing a baju kurong over a beige round collared tee-shirt and a pair of brown long trousers.
The reason given for not telling the public earlier? They did not want the public to have a “fixation” on this particular attire as the fugitive could have already changed his clothes. Now they want the public to help look out for his discarded attire.
How insulting to Singaporeans! Is it better to look out for these clothes when they are on the fugitive or when they have been taken off?
The police obviously felt the heat for not releasing basic information like his height, weight and attire earlier. Now they are trying to weasel their way out by asking Singaporeans to look out for discarded clothes. Do they really think Mas Selamat will strip off his clothes and place them neatly in the open for everyone to see?
The “independent” investigation
Singaporeans were told by the minister that there will be an “independent investigation” in to this matter. Then it was revealed that the Commission of Inquiry (COI) consists of an advisor to the President, a serving ambassador and former police chief, and the Deputy Secretary for Security at the Home Affairs Ministry.
It is already a stretch to say that the first two are independent, despite their government links and current portfolios, but having on the Commission the third-most senior civil servant in the very ministry at fault surely shatters any veneer of “independence”. Like Mr Wang, I have nothing personal against any of these commissioners. In fact, I met Mr Tee Tua Ba when he was Ambassador to Egypt and can attest that he is a very pleasant and friendly gentleman. I trust that these commissioners will be impartial to the best of their ability.
Nevertheless, I do not understand why the government boasts that this is an “independent commission” when by most objective measures, it is clearly not. Have they taken the liberty to redefine the meaning of “independent”?
It remains to be seen whether the COI’s report is going to be made public, just like the 9/11 Commission which investigated the failures that allowed the terrorist attacks of September 11 in New York and Washington.
Conclusion
I am aware that it is unfair to blame the entire Home Team for a security breach at a top- secret ISD detention centre that many Singaporeans didn’t even know existed. I am in full support of the hundreds of policemen who are working overtime to nab this alleged terrorist.
It is just unfortunate that despite the gravity of the mistakes that were made by MHA officials before and after Mas Selamat’s escape, Singaporeans are still expected to put up with haughty statements and lack of transparency from our government.
The most senior government leaders have been deafeningly silent on this issue since it broke. I will not be surprised if the first statements we hear from them are chastisements along the lines of Singaporeans — especially bloggers — not having a sense of proportion when criticising the government for this minor security lapse.
Singapore’s international reputation for security and competence has taken a hit as a result of this blunder. Unfortunately, however, it seems the government’s hubris hasn’t been dented one bit.
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Originally posted by Fatum:
no, he's gone ... it would have been a lot simpler to say that he died of natural causes, say, a heart attack, or some unknown thingy, right ? ..... this conspiracy theory is simply too far fetched .....
... if he has really escaped & have managed to evade recapture all on his own, this man is REMARKABLE...! Dangerous.... but remarkable.... better than the entire friggin SG Home Team... (bloody sia suay...) -
The person in charge of the initial search ops should go. Period.
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Originally posted by Fatum:
I'm not trying to be cynical here ..... but I think this is really about "face" ....
If only things were that simple.
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Got this forwarded to me via email...put here for the fun of it.
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Originally posted by HyperFocal:
... if he has really escaped & have managed to evade recapture all on his own, this man is REMARKABLE...! Dangerous.... but remarkable.... better than the entire friggin SG Home Team... (bloody sia suay...)which is why I say, we are not being told the entire story .... maybe there was an traitor from within (most likely), or something like that ..... now that, I find it much more believeable than the toilet break story ...
but i don't buy your theory ... if they had wanted the fellows disposed of, it's a lot easier to simply say he died of a heart attack (too much lemak, highly possible), or a multitude of other reasons, than to come up with something like that, loosing face internationally, wasting tons of money every day getting hundreds of officer to go strolling through the jungles, causing massive disruptions everywhere, right ? ....
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Originally posted by Xcert:
Got this forwarded to me via email...put here for the fun of it.
Its your avatar thats a laugh .
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The whole episode of Mas Selamat's escape from our high security prison betrays our serious lack of excellence in the country's whole police and security management.
If we have, by now with so many superscale senior officers in the service paid five figures in salaries, we should have developed a strong standard operating procedures ensuring fullest vigilance and checking for every possible lapse in the needed daily security routines to preempt such problems including possible subortage from within.
The Sun Szu Art of War should be thoroughly learned and practised such that no one from outside or within can ever penetrate our security prisons.
Only a well practised strategic routines will enable our officers at the security prison to prevent such security lapse possibly planned with the intervention by external organized criminals from Al-Quala.
It does not take a James Bond to figure out how Al-Qala will plan an attack to rescue their valued prisoners like Mas Selamat.
So intelligence and strategies of such high quality are part of the strategic vigilance routines needed to preempt an escape of such prisoner or security lapse.
Implement process management as posted at www.managefranchise.blogspot.com to understand fully how to set up a fool-proof security routine to govern the prison.
No need to talk about talents or employ superscale officers to look after such simple routines which should have long ago been attained in such establishment. -
Originally posted by SevenEleven:
well, the action is at the causeway and tuas link. look at that jam.My cousin's maid's boyfriend saw Mas Selamat around the forest near Republic Poly. He called the police and they did search the forest. He managed to escape though. He's spotted in ladies wear. I heard that he was spotted around Woodlands a few days ago.
Maybe that's the reason for the big jam?
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ok i love conspiracy theories. heres one i jus thought of.
sine no one can actually say how he escaped the detention cetre. (escape from toilet my arse..)
I suspect he might stillll be in there.
could MS have died while he was undergoing "interrogation"?
since he is a known public figure and to prevent retaliation by JI. they claim he has escaped, but right now he's actually decomposing in a makeshift grave at the deepest darkest corner of the detention centre.
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Originally posted by skeujin:
ok i love conspiracy theories. heres one i jus thought of.
sine no one can actually say how he escaped the detention cetre. (escape from toilet my arse..)
I suspect he might stillll be in there.
could MS have died while he was undergoing "interrogation"?
since he is a known public figure and to prevent retaliation by JI. they claim he has escaped, but right now he's actually decomposing in a makeshift grave at the deepest darkest corner of the detention centre.
nah, like i said, there are easier ways to deal with this, like a "heart attack" .... put that way, a one sentence news bite on the 9,30 news and the fellow will just fade away forever .... why slap themselves like this .... and it's not cheap to move gurkhas like this around either ...