Singabloodypore

By May Wong, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 18 March 2008 2014 hrs

SINGAPORE: Officers searching for escaped Jemaah Islamiyah leader, Mas Selamat Kastari, are using a database to make their hunt more effective.

Mas Selamat escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre some three weeks ago. The 47-year-old is alleged to have been the mastermind of a plot to crash a hijacked plane into Changi Airport.

The database used in the hunt contains key information such as the location of vacant buildings in Singapore and possible hideouts used by illegal immigrants.

These details come under a programme called Operations Terrain Mapping, which has been updated over the last three years by Home Team officers who registered their observations and contact networks on the database to tackle crime and terrorism.

And this is how the non-Singaporean media is reporting the same event...

Terror Suspect Eludes Posse of 4 Million
By SETH MYDANS
Published: March 14, 2008

SINGAPORE — The big mistake, officials here say, was letting the terrorist suspect make a trip to the bathroom.

Wanted posters of Mas Selamat Kastari are everywhere in Singapore, as are strangers’ searching glances.
Mas Selamat bin Kastari, alleged by the government to be the leader of a terrorist group here, escaped from a high-security prison two weeks ago while taking a bathroom break, in a major embarrassment for this efficient, tightly battened city-state.

In a furious response, the government put the entire country on alert, setting up checkpoints, sealing its borders, patrolling its parks and its shores, even urging people to keep an eye on their bicycles in case the wanted man decided to pedal to freedom.

With each new empty-handed day the embarrassment deepens as Singapore confronts its Tora Bora moment, its most-wanted terrorist suspect melting into the urban terrain, as Osama bin Laden evaded American troops in Afghanistan.

and it contains a quote from MrBrown...

The official account is that the prisoner asked to go to the bathroom while waiting for family members to visit, then simply disappeared from the Whitley Road Detention Center.

If this is true, said Lee Kin Mun, a leading political blogger who calls himself Mr. Brown, the government should “take a leaf from school exams, where security seems to be tighter” and where students must be escorted to the bathroom.