A Singapurean teenager who allegedly plans to kill dozens of Muslims out of several mosques has been arrested, the Department of Internal Security of the city-state said Wednesday.
The 17 -year -old was arrested in March, the ISD said in a statement, added that he had considered the white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who in 2019 had killed the faithful in the mosques in New Zealand, as a “hero.”
ISD also said he had “identified as a ‘supremacist of East Asia'”, and had decided five mosques in Singapore for his prayer attacks after Friday.
“This child wanted to kill at least 100 Muslims, so he can kill more Muslims than Tarrant.
“When he was arrested … he had already made several attempts to get a gun. He told ISD openly if he had received a weapon, he would have carried out his attacks.”
The teenager had been in line with Nick Lee, 18, who was arrested in December for having similar plans.
The multicultural country has seen several cases in recent years where Singapurenses young people have been arrested for allegedly making attack plans after exposure to online extremist content.
In 2024, the authorities arrested a teenager who allegedly planned a stabbing attack inspired by the Islamic State group in an occupied suburb.
In the same Wednesday statement, the ISD also said that a 15 -year -old girl was placed under a restriction order in February, prohibiting traveling or having access to the Internet without the approval of the ISD director.
He claimed that between July 2023 and December 2024, the girl was in at least eight short -term online romantic relations with supporters of the Islamic State Group abroad.
“She went to promise of loyalty to an Isis chatbot,” Shanmugam said. “I wanted to fight and die for Isis, he looked for flights to go to Syria, thought about how he was going to save money to plan his trips.”
He added that the tendency of the increase in radicalism and the extremism of young people through the Internet was “worrying.”
ISD said that “self-radicalization can happen very quickly.”
“In the case of the 15 -year -old, he just took weeks,” he said, asking the public to “be attentive to the signals.”
