Singapore teenager arrested for allegedly planning ISIS-inspired terror attack

Singapore has arrested a teenager who was allegedly planning an Islamic State-inspired terror attack on a busy suburb, the home minister said on Friday, adding it was a “very close call”.

After seeing Islamic State propaganda glorifying knife attacks, the 17-year-old visited the suburb to rehearse his attack before being arrested in August, Interior Minister K. Shanmugam said.

“He was pretty serious because he actually practiced stabbing movements with the scissors. He figured out which spot would cause death – essentially the neck area – so he practiced hitting the neck,” Shanmugam told reporters.

“I would say it was a very close call. It is very fortunate that ISD (Internal Security Department) arrested him in time.”

The teenager, who was detained under the Internal Security Act, had allegedly planned a knife attack to coincide with the September school holidays when the area was swarming with people.

In a statement released on Friday, ISD said the teenager had been exposed to the flood of extremist online materials published by the Islamic State group following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7 last year.

“He joined various online groups that provided information about ISIS’s activities and accepted ISIS’s rhetoric of promoting the use of violence to establish an Islamic caliphate,” ISD said.

By January, “the youth had become a staunch ISIS supporter and aspired to die as a martyr fighting for the group,” it said.

According to the ISD, he swore loyalty to IS and wanted to travel to Syria to fight there.

The teenager acted alone because he was incapable of radicalizing other people, ISD added.

His family noticed he was watching videos of radical preachers and advised him to stop, but he continued and used “code words” when discussing his beliefs online, the department said.

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