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Year 2021
December 2021

IN FOCUS: The inside story of how ISD crippled a terrorist network targeting Singapore after 9/11

December 04, 2021
By Aqil Haziq Mahmud

Twenty years ago, the Internal Security Department uncovered a plot to launch terror attacks against Singapore. CNA looks back at how it raced against time to thwart what would have brought devastating consequences for the country.

SINGAPORE: As the World Trade Center towers in New York came crashing down on Sep 11, 2001, officers of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) watched in horror.

Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden had claimed responsibility for the terrorist attack, and security agencies around the world scrambled to make sense of the implications for their countries.

“As a security agency, we were also taken by surprise, but at the same time, we also wanted to make sure that there is no imminent threat to Singapore, and that there is no Singaporean who is a part of this,” Rajah*, a senior operations officer with ISD, told CNA’s Insight programme.

In 2001, Rajah headed a team of operations officers that dismantled the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network in Singapore after uncovering multiple plots against targets here.

The scale, audacity and intricacy of these plots – using explosives to attack US military personnel, bases and foreign embassies in Singapore – shocked ISD officers at the time.

Twenty years on, these well-developed plots remain Singapore’s closest shave with transnational Islamist terrorism to date, ISD said in a news release on Saturday (Dec 4).

The JI operatives in Singapore had been trained by terrorists in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines, and had received instructions and support from foreign Al-Qaeda operatives. This meant they had the skills and technical know-how to wreak havoc in Singapore.

“Had the group succeeded in their plans, there would have been catastrophic consequences, both in terms of physical loss of lives and damage to Singapore’s communal harmony and social fabric,” ISD said.

But in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, Rajah, now in his mid-50s, said ISD was not aware of JI’s existence. The department reached out to the community, eager to address concerns, urge vigilance and appeal for any information that might connect Singaporeans to the attack.

THE TIP-OFF

It was during one of these community engagements, days after the 9/11 attack, that the department was tipped off.

This set the wheels in motion for an operation, between December 2001 and August 2002, that would lead to 56 people being detained under the Internal Security Act.

The tip off came from a “vigilant” Singaporean who had information on Mohammad Aslam Yar Ali Khan, ISD said. According to the informant, Aslam, a Singaporean of Pakistani descent, claimed to know Osama Bin Laden and said he had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

“That set some alarm bells ringing in us, especially against the backdrop of 9/11. So, we were very concerned,” Rajah said.

Detailed sketches and notes of Yishun MRT and its vicinity found in Afghanistan. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

Detailed sketches and notes of Yishun MRT and its vicinity found in Afghanistan. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

Detailed sketches and notes of Yishun MRT and its vicinity found in Afghanistan. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

Detailed sketches and notes of Yishun MRT and its vicinity found in Afghanistan. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

ISD officers started to watch Aslam and his associates very closely.

On Oct 4, 2001, Aslam left Singapore on a flight to Pakistan, en route to Afghanistan. In the middle of that month, officers observed that Aslam’s close friend was in close contact with foreign terrorist elements and actively tried to buy ammonium nitrate, an explosive material.

The friend had also converted US dollars into local currency, later discovered to be payment for the reconnaissance of the US and Israeli embassies and other locations in Singapore as part of plans for an imminent attack.

“(This was) information that we put together and we were in the process of working out, mapping out the network of Aslam and associates, and how we want to execute our operation,” Rajah said.

 

Former JI member Jameel* joined the group in 1989 before he was trained in Afghanistan and tasked to plan sabotage operations against US interests in Singapore.

The former JI members CNA interviewed for this story have been rehabilitated and released from detention.

JI had also planned to impair Singapore’s military capabilities by targeting the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) headquarters in Bukit Gombak, ISD said. So, Jameel was asked to conduct reconnaissance of Gombak camp.

That year, the cell surveyed the perimeter and exits of the camp, and even entered the compound on several occasions under the guise of courier services, ISD said.

Report from a reconnaissance mission on MINDEF headquarters. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

“As a leader of the cell, I sent one of my men to become a dispatch rider where he went into MINDEF to deliver parcels or packages,” Jameel, now in his late 50s and working as a cleaner, told CNA.

“In the mail room, he surveyed what was in the mail room, then he came out and looked around the MINDEF compound.”

One of the cell members also worked at a company that distributed a defence magazine whose subscribers included officers who worked at Gombak. “So we got to know some names, and we gave these to our seniors,” Jameel said.

One of the more detailed schemes was when a JI member tailed a MINDEF officer from Gombak all the way to Tampines. It turned out that JI had considered placing explosives in a MINDEF officer’s car and detonating them while the car was in the camp, ISD said.

CHANGE OF PLANS

Then on Dec 3, the media published a report that Aslam had been arrested by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

The story, which was likely to attract further media attention, forced ISD’s hand. The department decided to bring forward its operation against Aslam’s associates before they went underground or left the country to escape arrest.

On Dec 8, the operation began. ISD senior research officer Wei Ling* remembers vividly how that day, a Saturday, started.

“When my research team, colleagues and I went into the office that day, we thought that it was pretty much going to be an open-and-shut kind of operation that would be wrapped up by that weekend, or just a few days after that,” she told CNA.

“But by nightfall on Saturday, we realised that we were so far wrong, and that we had actually stumbled on something big. Specifically, we had to somehow race against the clock to stop terrorist attacks from happening on Singapore’s soil.”

The next day, ISD officers arrested six of Aslam’s associates and seized items of interest from their homes.

PEELING BACK THE LAYERS

Back at the office, the pressure was mounting.

Research officers like Wei Ling worked 12-hour shifts, each handling two or three suspects that had been brought in. These officers worked directly with their operations counterparts, who were assigned the same suspects to focus on.

Wei Ling, now in her 40s, said it was tough work in the beginning because the JI suspects were not talking: “They were clamming up, which basically meant that we do not know what to look out for,” she said.

“So, it really felt like we were trying to put together a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle but the problem is that we did not know how it was supposed to look like in the end.”

The plan was for ISD’s operations officers to try breaking down the suspects, Wei Ling said, while research officers combed through the copious amounts of evidence that had been seized.

These included things like photo albums, religious books, name cards and even scraps of paper stuck between the pages of books.

The discoveries got more sinister.

Wei Ling’s colleague looked into a VCD labelled “visiting Singapore sightseeing”. It turned out to be a reconnaissance video of foreign embassies in Singapore that the terrorists wanted to attack. The video soundtrack was the Aerosmith song, I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing.

“They did have a very perverse sense of humour, the JI members,” Wei Ling said.

“So, it was all this day-in day-out trial and error, and through some real finds as well, that we slowly managed to piece together this local and regional threat that is JI.”

When another colleague inserted a seized diskette into her computer, she found bomb making instructions. Wei Ling recalled her colleague shaking and her heart racing.

“At that point in time, it really drove home to her and to us that there were indeed Singaporeans who were intent on harming Singapore,” Wei Ling said.

“It’s just the thought of your own countrymen, you know. People who you might have taken the MRT with, people who you might have met on the streets, normal people.

“But yet, they have such cynical thoughts. It’s just mind bending. At that point, we got ourselves together very quickly because there was absolutely no time to waste and we got down to doing what was needed.”

A white sports bag containing sulphur powder, used to synthesise explosives. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

Notes showing how to construct explosives were seized. (Photo: Internal Security Department)

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