Singapore said yesterday it had sent a security team to Jakarta to discuss Indonesian police findings that the city-state could have been the target of a terror attack plot.
The Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs said the team from the Internal Security Department was in talks with the Indonesian police about the findings, which included a map of Singapore’s train network discovered in the home of Ahmad Sayid Maulana, a terror suspect killed last week.
The Straits Times newspaper said the underground train station on Singapore’s Orchard Road shopping belt — frequented by foreign tourists, expatriate workers and locals — had been circled on the map.
It also quoted an unnamed Indonesian police investigator as saying that Singapore “obviously” was a target of an attack and that the suspects had planned to enter the city-state via Malaysia.
“We are aware of the items recovered and the speculations and possibilities that the terrorists could have been planning an attack against Singapore and we are investigating,” a Ministry of Home Affairs spokeswoman said.
“We should also keep in mind that Singapore has been and remains a target for terrorists and we must always maintain our vigilance,” she said.
The Internal Security Department handles security threats from “international terrorism, foreign subversion and espionage,” its Web site says.
Maulana had been identified in an International Crisis Group report last month as a suspect who had planned attacks on police headquarters in Jakarta and surveyed sites for militant training camps in Indonesia.
The Straits Times said the 36-year-old was shot dead by Indonesia’s elite anti-terror squad Detachment 88 during a raid in East Jakarta on May 12.
A map of an airport in the city of General Santos in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao was also among the items found in Maulana’s house, the report said.
John Harrison, a security analyst at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the-city state was a prime target chiefly because it is an ally of Western countries.
“Certainly, Singapore remains a tier one target for the JI [Jemaah Islamiyah terror network],” he said.
“It’s because of Singapore’s position as an ally of the United States and other Western nations,” he said.
“You have a concentration of Western interests,” he said, pointing to the numerous multinational corporations based in the city-state as well as foreign embassies.
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