SINGAPORE: As the World Trade Center towers in New York came crashing down on Sep 11, 2001, officers of Singapore’s Internal Security Department watched in horror.
Photos from a reconnaissance mission on the water pipelines at Bukit Timah service reservoir and nature reserve. 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. 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.It was during one of these community engagements, days after the 9/11 attack, that the department was tipped off.
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. After 9/11, an Al-Qaeda operative approached Singapore JI members with a plan to use truck bombs to attack targets in Singapore, including the US and Israeli Embassies, the Australian and British High Commissions and commercial buildings housing US firms. Singapore JI members had already taken steps to get 17 tonnes of ammonium nitrate for the manufacture of the truck bombs when they were arrested in December 2001, near when the attacks were scheduled to take place.
The former JI members CNA interviewed for this story have been rehabilitated and released from detention. 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,” Alif said.
“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. “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.”
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