Tape shows Singapore
attack plans
January 12, 2002 Posted:
1:47 AM EST (0647 GMT)
SINGAPORE -- The
Singapore government has released a chilling videotape it says shows targets
of a planned attack by a broken terrorist cell in the city-state.
The video shows footage of
U.S. military targets but the government says that the militants were also
planning attacks on U.S., British, Israeli and Australian missions in Singapore.
Fifteen people were arrested
in Singapore last month who the government believes are part of a terrorist
cell with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Two people have
since been released.
Bin Laden is accused by the
U.S. of ordering the September 11 attacks.
The arrests were a direct
result of intelligence gathered in Afgthanistan, U.S. officials told CNN.
Singapore's Home Affairs
ministry said some videotapes and several Arabic-language notes detailed
plans on attacks on American targets in the city.
They were found in the rubble
of a house of a senior al Qaeda official in Afghanistan by U.S. troops,
the ministry said in a statement released on Friday.
Bus attack
On the released videotape,
a terrorist suspect is heard describing a potential target, a shuttle bus
used regularly by U.S. military personnel to get to a Singapore train station.
The man speaking on the tape
is identified as Hashim bin Abas, one of 13 suspects in custody under Singapore's
Internal Security Act.
Singapore says that eight
of the 13 had been to al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and were trained in
the use of AK-47 rifles, mortars and modern military tactics.
Bin Abas is heard on the
tape saying that boxes commonly carried on motorbikes in Singapore could
be used to carry explosives.
"You will notice some of
the boxes that are placed on the motorcycles; these are the same type of
boxes that we intend to use," he says on the tape, describing images on
the recording.
The suspect then identifies
a vehicle, used by the U.S. military to transport personnel to a train
station.
"This is one, one of the
buses, one of the regular buses that carry the military personnels from
Sembawang to Yishun MRT station," bin Abas is heard saying on the tape.
'Ready for action'
The Singapore government
statement says that al Qaeda leaders "showed interest" in the attack plans,
which were described as "developed and ready for action." But for "reasons
not known" the plan was never carried out.
A second plan called for
an attack on U.S. Navy vessels in the waters of Singapore, with a "kill
zone" designated on a confiscated defense military map.
The ministry's press release
also said that the group was planning attacks on the British High Commission,
the Israeli Embassy, the Australian High Commission in Singapore and commercial
buildings housing U.S. companies.
Another suspect took photos
of Singapore's Paya Lebar Airbase and U.S. military aircraft at the base
as a "potential target for [a] terrorist attack," the government said.
It said that some of the
detained suspects were approached by two men in September and October last
year to "assist in a plan for terrorist bombing against specific targets
in Singapore."
The terrorist cell had about
four tons of ammonium nitrate, an explosive chemical, in Malaysia and had
been instructed by two 'foreign suspects' to get 17 more tons to make truck
bombs, the statement said.
On of the two men referred
to as "Mike" was "a trainer and bomb maker" with the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front, some of the detainees told authorities. The Moro Islamic Liberation
Front is a Muslim group trying to set up an independent state in the southern
Philippines.
The other man, "Sammy" was
of "Arab extraction", the government said. |
