Jemaah Islamiyah Hijack Plotter Escapes

Amazing, isn't it, how often these terrorists manage to escape? Usually it's in places like Yemen.

This time it's in Singapore.

A key member of a Southeast Asian terror network, who had plotted the hijacking of an airplane to be crashed into Singapore's Changi airport, has escaped from prison and is at large, the government said Wednesday.

Mas Selamat Kastari, the leader of the Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiyah, escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Center on Wednesday afternoon, the Home Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

"Extensive police resources have been deployed to track him down," the ministry said, while urging the public to immediately contact police if they learn of his whereabouts.

"He walks with a limp and is presently at large. He is not known to be armed," it said.

Mas Selamat had been detained since March 2006 under Singapore's Internal Security Act, which provides for indefinite detention without trial, after having been deported from Indonesia.

Indefinite detention? Ooh, the Democrats will be very upset to find this out.

He had fled the city-state in December 2001 in the wake of the government's arrests of local JI members soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Mas Selamat is alleged to have been involved in JI plots to attack Western establishments such as the U.S. Embassy, the American Club and military installations here. After he fled Singapore, he allegedly plotted to hijack an airplane in order to crash it into Changi Airport.

He was detained in Indonesia in 2003 for possessing falsified identification documents and was held for three years before being deported to Singapore.

The Singapore government detained more than 30 alleged JI members here in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States alerted authorities here to the existence of the clandestine group in Southeast Asia.