1st Question - How did he escape from such a "secure"
detention centre under the noses of his guards ?
Answer:
The authorities have yet to release any details so far. Only DPM Wong K S has said his escape took place in the space of only a few minutes. Incredible! This chap M S must rank with the Best of those who made real, fantastic escapes from prison camps. Many such great escapes are now stuff of legends...written into books and epitomised in movies.
Since none of us on the outside are any wiser...let's be patient and leave the explanation to some red-faced fella to tell us.
2nd Question - How has he eluded Capture so far? Thousands of policeman, elite forces, tracker dogs, and other auxilliary forces have thrown cordons around the immediate vicinity of escape and Bt Batok nature reserve to name a few places. They have conducted searches everywhere. EVERYWHERE???
No....sorry, not everywhere. They were searching only in places they thought he might be hiding out.
This is where M S outwitted them.....so far.
MS is an incorrigible, trained terrorist who spent much time [ 2 terms ] in Afghanistan. He received training from the Taliban and the Al Qaeda cells operating openly over there. You can be sure that the training included how to escape from prison centres and after that, how to elude capture.
Those of you familiar with the true story of "The Great Escape"movie starring Steve McQueen, James Coburn and other top stars will recall that it took place in a German POW camp. They were in enemy territory without the advantage of knowing the local language, geography, culture, no helpful local network etc... to aid their escape. Thus it wasn't surprising that most were recaptured and executed. Still, a handful made it and much can be learnt from these and other successes....both ways, how to escape and elude capture and how to prevent the same from happening.
MS had been incarcerated for a few years in Indonesia and then here in S'pore.
He has had too much time on his hands to plan his escape...possibly with the help of the existing J I network here or some "fringe" players and likely with secret communications filtered through his family meetings at the centre or worse, some other means.
So....how could he remain undetected in the face of such massive searches ?
To answer that....we need to go into his mind, to "think like he would and act as he could have".
The SOP of our forces in such an eventuality is no guessing game to him.
The JI members, many from our own S'pore, know everything there is to know about SAF and Police procedures, even Immigration procedures etc... How they would likely respond.
If he knew all that, with his cunning, he would have in place a pre-arranged post- escape RENDEZVOUS pick up point/place....which was already relayed to his network through...[?], way before the actual escape took place.
All it required was for him to remain in hiding, in a secluded place where tracker dogs cannot find his smell or trail.....until the predetermined time..., quietly emerge under cover of darkness at the pre-agreed location, be immediately whisked away preferably in a closed van....and to a temporary safe haven within S'pore still. If his operatives missed him on the 1st attempt..due perhaps to the presence of police, they would have arranged for a 2nd attempt, perhaps the next night and so on. All it takes is a few minutes or even seconds for that to happen...the whisking away! And he's gone...disappeared into thin air !
The only place near Whitley Detention Centre where tracker dogs may lose the scent of an escapee is.........THE BUKIT TIMAH CANAL !!!
IT IS THE DRY SEASON NOW AND WATER LEVEL IS LOW IN THE CANAL MAKING IT EASY TO WADE ACROSS OR WALK ALONG THE BANK IN EITHER DIRECTION. There are
adjoining "tributary" sunken drains large enough to hide anyone for sometime in their deep recesses within.
From the hidden spot, one can easily move out for a late night pick -up as the main road is beside the canal ! Too convenient ! Both Bt Timah and Dunearn Road have very convenient pick -up points for vehicles.
A week has passed by and I have not seen any searches in the canals yet. It already may be too late....or is it???
Wise Owl
4 comments:
It looks like you do not buy the Govt's story that:
a) Mas Selamat is acting alone;
b) He is not a danger to the public.
Hi C See, Thanks for asking. It is not about"buying or not buying the govt,s view" on both the points you mentioned. I
It is about THE DANGER OF ASSUMING TOO MUCH as has been shown in the 9/11 attack in the USA, Pearl Harbour in WW2 etc.
The suicide pilots who hijacked those planes went for flying lessons in USA flying schools! Most had terrorist background. So many instances of red alert signals were detected by CIA field operatives about these suspicious chaps "out of the blue" learning flying, and coupled with their background...signalled a DANGER category alert.
But what happened?
The detailed reports by these field officers, who were 100% correct in their assessment[ with hindsight]...were pigeonholed!
Their accurate reports of potential DANGER never went beyond their immediate superiors...who had ASSUMED TOO MUCH[ that there was no danger].
If those suicide pilots, were pulled in and thoroughly interrogated 9/11 would never have occured. So many thousands of lives lost all wasted because a handful of incompetent officers HAD ASSUMED TOO MUCH!
And if M Selamat is not a danger why then has the authorities conducted the searches in such a massive, overwhelming fashion?
Posters everywhere, elite Gurkhas units, elite Police units, SAF, auxillary forces, tracker dogs,...all by the thousands.
Why indeed?
The answer is obvious.
Yeah I think your reasoning sounds very logical. Very likely there are more of them out there and the govt knows. If you go to a field and manage to catch a couple of big grass hoppers and some more tiny ones, chances are that there are more that evaded capture.
I like your grasshopper analogy..simple yet illuminating. We can never catch all of them as you've rightly concluded.
The JI network, like most terrorist networks, consists of 2 levels or structures.
A) The active field operatives like M S and others hell-bent on killing or blowing up the world.
B) The sympathisers...those fringe players who provide all kinds of aid to their evil cause but who take no active "cowboy" action themselves because they are untrained and may let down the org easily when captured.
The vast majority in the network are in the "B" group.
But therein lies the DANGER. Most are not known to the govt. No files on them as they are not overt operatives like MS, Hambali, Dulmatin and such.
After WW2, the new German govt kept files on more than 90,000 known,documented NAZI war criminals. Vast thousands more were not in the files and continued to live, some even reached to high up positions in govt holding top posts, in many sectors.
Only a tiny percentage of these vast numbers of evil men were ever caught and brought to justice...to answer for their crimes of atrocities and murder.
Simon Wiesenthal....the most famous of all the NAZI Hunters, started a centre all by himself to gather and collaborate info on the most high profile case first. He had much success such as catching Adolf Eichmann in Argentina! Eichmann was executed in Israel after trail around 1961/2.
The v v good movie, "The Odessa File" around 1974,tells a compelling true story about those who were never caught and continue their secret links and network, even today.
No govt can presume to know all there is to know!
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