PM to explain Mas Selamat escape

A full account of how terror fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari escaped is expected on Monday, when Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng makes a ministerial statement in Parliament.

Mr Wong will likely detail the findings of a Committee of Inquiry on how the JI leader broke out of the Whitley Road Detention Centre on Feb 27, and what has been done to deal with the lapse.

The three-member committee chaired by former High Court Judge Goh Joon Seng was formed last month to investigate the escape.

Mr Wong, who is also Home Affairs Minister, had said last month that committee sittings could not be held in public as the Whitley centre is a ’sensitive installation’. (story)

Singapore supports China during Tibet unrest

Singapore on Tuesday voiced support for China’s handling of unrest in Tibet and said there should be no ‘politicisation’ of the Olympic Games hosted by Beijing in August. ‘Singapore supports the declared policy of the Chinese government to protect the lives and property of its citizens from violent demonstrators with minimum use of force,’ a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

‘We are opposed to the politicisation of the Olympics.’

Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, of masterminding the protests, saying the unrest was a deliberate campaign to sabotage the Beijing Games. (story)

Australian tourists taken hostage … briefly by Chinese man

Australian tourists briefly held hostage in China by a lone man armed with explosives on Thursday told of their ordeal as Canberra urged holidaymakers to heed travel warnings ahead of the Beijing Olympics.The man attacked a group of 10 Australian travel agents visiting the northwest city of Xi’an, famed as home of the Terracotta Warriors, on Wednesday before he was shot dead by a police sniper.

‘He was pacing up and down the bus, they couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then he turned around, opened up his jacket and he had a bomb strapped to him,’ said Sue Wynne, a friend of hostage Rhiannon Dunkley, after speaking to her.

Nine of the hostages were released by the man, but a 48-year-old woman was held captive for several hours before the gunman was killed.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said there was nothing to suggest the Australians were deliberately targeted and the motive for the attack remained unclear.

‘We’ve asked for a full briefing to try to understand the motivation,’ Mr Smith told journalists in Melbourne.

The travel agents were on an educational tour to Beijing, Xi’an and Shanghai, organised by a Sydney-based travel wholesale company, when the attack took place. (story)

Hunt for Mas Selamat Kastari continues

SAF soldiers have joined the island-wide land, sea and air hunt.

The manhunt for the escaped Jemaah Islamiyah leader has intensified, with more than 100 soldiers joining the thousands of security forces that are tracking down the fugitive across the island and other air and sea checkpoints.

It is almost 24 hours since the wanted man, Mas Selamat Kastari, 47, who was linked to a sensation plant to crash a hijacked plane into Changi Airport, has been on the run.

Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told Parliament earlier on Thursday that the JI militant escaped while he was brought to meet his family who was visiting him at the detention centre.

While being led to the room to meet his family, he asked to go to the toilet and gave his escorting officers the slip. The public was informed of his escape only about four hours later because the authorities said he posed no ‘imminent danger to the public’ at the time. (story)

Marcus Ng Yi Loong gets 1 week in jail

Former teen actor Marcus Ng Yi Loong, 21, began his one-week jail term on Tuesday after he failed in his appeal to get his sentence for insubordination quashed.The High Court on Tuesday upheld the jail sentence meted out by a Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) court martial in July last year. He was also reprimanded by a Military Court of Appeal for being rude to his superior.

This is the second time he has been hauled up since he started his military service in September 2006.

Ng, who holds the rank of Private, is perhaps best-known as the rebellious teen in the TV sitcom Phua Chu Kang.

Ng’s troubles in the SAF began in October 2006 when his superiors at the SAF Medical Training Institute slapped him with four charges for offences including not obeying orders.

In February last year, while he was being investigated by the SAF legal process, Ng chased and argued aggressively with a 50-year-old woman Warrant Officer in his unit’s Operations Room. (story)

“Sorry for punching you, I’m an American sailor”

The United States Navy has apologized verbally to the motorist who was punched in the face and thrown against two cars in the Orchard Road shopping belt last Friday by an American sailor. The American Embassy has also pledged that the US Navy sailor will have to face the music from his ship’s commanding officer. If he is found “guilty”, the sailor could have his pay, rank and other privileges docked.

‘Under US military law, the Commanding Officer of the ship can impose any combination of any of the following: confinement, hard labour, restriction, loss of wages, loss of rank, and discharge - punitive or administrative. The disposition depends on the investigation,” the spokesman told The Straits Times on Monday.

‘Generally, these types of incidents result in punitive action with the member’s career, liberty, and pay affected.’

Mr K.M. Ho, the motorist who was assaulted, said his lawyers are taking up his case with investigators from the US Navy’s Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

If the matter goes to court, it will be at Mr Ho’s expense and could amount to several thousand dollars. (story)

Military rebels arrested as police storm hotel

Military rebels and their civilian supporters were arrested on Thursday after Philippine forces stormed a five-star hotel where they had been holed up, a reporter at the scene said. Heavily armed security forces marched the rebels, their arms raised behind their heads in surrender, from the second floor of the five-star Peninsula Hotel into its ruined lobby, the reporter witnessed.

Rebel leader Antonio Trillanes, a navy lieutenant who was elected a senator in May, was hauled into a prison bus along with former vice president Teofisto Guingona, a 79-year-old politician who was not hand cuffed.

Brigadier General Danilo Lim and the band of rebels he led into the hotel early Thursday were also taken into the bus between a phalanx of police. (story)

Singapore officer lauded for work in Afghanistan

People ould start to queue outside dentist Lee Chee Wee’s clinic from midnight. Many had travelled from many kilometres away. This was not an everyday scene here but in Afghanistan.

Major (Dr) Lee, 32, a dental officer from the Singapore Armed Forces HQ Medical Corps, was part of a five-man SAF team which set up a dental clinic in a hospital in the country’s Bamiyan province.

On Thursday, he was among 46 servicemen who received the Overseas Service Medal and Bar (Enhanced) from Second Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen. (story)

Security tightened for ASEAN Summit

With just a couple of days to go to the high-profile 13th Asean Summit and its related meetings, stringent measures in security and traffic management by the police, in concert with the Singapore Armed Forces and the Singapore Civil Defence Force, are being put in place.

For example, the directive has gone out that none of the 120 new 5- and 7-series BMWs ferrying the heads of state and other VIPs around will fly the small flags indicating the delegates’ countries.

This is to prevent certain delegates from being recognized and falling target to attacks.

The average man in the street might come up against delays on the daily commute for motorists and pedestrians alike, especially around the Shangri-la Hotel, the meeting venue.

Some roads will be cordoned off for a part of or the whole day, and random vehicles or members of the public around the event areas may be pulled over for checks.

(story)

5 ton truck actually mobile command post

These five-tonner trucks, with rear cabins that are designed and built here, can morph into command posts, the nerve centres of army operations where battle movements are planned - at the push of a button.

Mr Soh Kwok Chye, a programme manager (Land Systems) with the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), said the rear cabin opens out into an air-conditioned office space ‘about the size of a badminton court’.

Based on feedback from field trials with army units, the roof of the command post has been designed high enough to accommodate a large screen, on which army commanders project digital maps and watch aerial images filmed in real time by unmanned aerial vehicles. (story)