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HIS guards let him out of their sight and were slow to respond when he failed to emerge from the visitors' toilet before his meeting with family members.
The officers escorting Mas Selamat Kastari 'failed in their duties', Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told Parliament yesterday.
These human lapses, together with physical ones that enabled the JI leader's escape, pointed to 'a slackening in internal vigilance and supervision', he said.
'Complacency, for whatever reason, be it fatigue given the protracted security operations by ISD since 2001 or routinisation over time, had crept into the operating culture,' he said.
The Committee of Inquiry (COI), set up to investigate Mas Selamat's escape, found that the Gurkha guard who entered the toilet in the family visit block with Mas Selamat did not stop him from closing the door to the urinal cubicle.
That went against operating procedure which requires an escorting officer to have his eye on a detainee at all times.
Moreover, when he and his colleagues realised the detainee was taking too long, they 'failed to respond immediately and decisively', the COI noted.
The guard went to consult his fellow Gurkha guard outside the toilet. The other guard, in turn, asked the special duty operative who, being female, went to the assistant case officer. He then kicked open the cubicle door - 11 minutes after the fugitive had entered it.
'If the guard had immediately checked on Mas Selamat in the urinal cubicle, Mas Selamat might have been stopped or at least his escape would have been discovered earlier,' Mr Wong said.
He noted that the Gurkhas thought they did the right thing as they are not supposed to communicate with detainees. However, this course of action 'unfortunately turned out to be wrong'.
The officers also failed to follow the protocol when they allowed Mas Selamat to change into the civilian clothes allowed for family visits without requiring him to hand over his detention centre-issued attire, the COI found.
Mas Selamat is believed to have been wearing at least two layers of clothing when he emerged from the changing room.
In its report, the COI also said that Mas Selamat had probably planned his escape over time, helped by his routine use of the toilet in the family visit block.
On earlier occasions, he had partially closed the urinal cubicle door, then completely closed it, so as to test how the guards would react.
But the guards did not notice this, possibly because they are frequently rotated to avoid them becoming too familiar with detainees, the COI noted.
'That no detainee had escaped before may have been one reason why an escape was unimaginable,' said Mr Wong.
'Even when the guards and the special duty operative became concerned over the time Mas Selamat was taking in the toilet, they did not think that he might have escaped,' he added.
Mr Wong has ordered that the officers responsible for the escape be replaced.
Detainees will now also be handcuffed when moved around the centre. In addition, legcuffs will be applied when they are outside the centre, say when they visit a doctor.
ZAKIR HUSSAIN
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