S'pore issues preventive detention on 15-year-old, youngest to date

Krabian : Now you know why the Authority must stop PAS provocative and fanatism behaviour before they poison the young minds.

Malaysiakini : A self-radicalised 15-year-old Singaporean was issued with an order of detention (OD), the youngest individual to date dealt with the under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for terrorism-related activities in Singapore.

According to the republic’s Internal Security Department (ISD), the 15-year-old male was a Secondary Three student at the time of his arrest under ISA in November 2022 and was issued with the OD in December 2022.

“Investigations found that he was self-radicalised by online terrorist propaganda and supportive of Al-Qaeda and ISIS,” the department said in a statement issued yesterday on the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

ISD said the teenager had considered conducting attacks in Singapore and harboured the desire to establish an Islamic caliphate through violent means.  “He is the youngest individual to date dealt with under the ISA for terrorism-related activities,” said the department. Prior to this, a 16-year-old male Singaporean who was detained under the ISA in December 2020, was the youngest to be dealt with under the ISA.

ISIS

He was inspired by far-right extremist ideologies and had planned to conduct knife attacks against Muslims at two mosques in Singapore, the ISD said. ISD noted that, among others, the 15-year-old detainee will undergo intensive religious counselling with two religious counsellors from The Religious Rehabilitation Group to address the religious misconceptions that led to his support for armed violence and terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda.  

Online ISIS propaganda

Separately, a 16-year-old male Singaporean, a Secondary Four student, was issued with a restriction order under the ISA in January 2023. ISD said investigations showed that the youth had been self-radicalised by online ISIS propaganda and believed in the use of armed violence to establish an Islamic caliphate.

The youth joined multiple ISIS-themed servers on the online gaming platform Roblox, where the virtual game settings replicated physical ISIS conflict zones, such as those in Syria and Marawi city in the southern Philippines.

“Extremist and terrorist groups are known to target youths for radicalisation and recruitment online as they may be more impressionable and easily influenced in their search for a sense of identity, purpose and belonging.

“Terrorist groups have also misused online gaming platforms, for example, by disseminating their ideological beliefs through video games, using in-game communication features to recruit vulnerable gamers and appropriating gaming culture to increase their reach to younger target audiences,” ISD said. The two youths were online contacts of an 18-year-old Singaporean who was detained under the ISA in December 2022.

Since 2015, ISD said it has dealt with 11 self-radicalised Singaporean youths aged 20 or below under the ISA, all of whom had been radicalised online.

- Bernama