Singaporean authorities said on the 27th that three teenagers have been detained, each of whom had planned attacks involving knives, guns, and bombs. Authorities also warned about the threat posed by “youth radicalization.”
According to AFP, Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) stated that the three teenagers were detained between April and June of this year. All of them were “self-radicalized” online, adopting violent extremist ideologies.
Currently, all three have been detained under the Internal Security Act, which permits detention without trial.
One of them, a 14-year-old student, was accused of planning a knife attack within his school. According to the ISD, he was attracted to the jihadist ideology of the extremist group “Islamic State” (IS) and intended to target non-Muslim teachers and classmates, and to livestream the attack.
Another detainee is a 19-year-old polytechnic student, accused of planning to attack military personnel at an airbase with a knife, as well as LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) students on his campus.
The last suspect is a 15-year-old teenager who, according to the ISD, was in the early stages of planning a bomb attack.
The Internal Security Department stated: “Although their cases are unrelated, all three were self-radicalized online by violent extremist ideologies, and each had made preparations to carry out attacks locally.”
“These three cases fully highlight the seriousness of the youth radicalization threat in Singapore.”
Last year, Singaporean police detained an 18-year-old teenager suspected of planning to attack a Singapore mosque with a homemade gun, knife, and Molotov cocktails, and to livestream the event.
Singapore’s 2024 terrorism threat report also listed youth radicalization as a “particularly concerning” issue. Of the 52 “self-radicalization” cases known to security departments at that time, 13 involved individuals aged 20 or under.