SINGAPORE - Unhappy with the Singapore Government after he was jailed and caned here over an immigration offence, a Malaysian man decided to seek revenge by creating a bogus suicide bombing plot targeting the 40th National Day Parade (NDP).
On July 24, 2005, Khor Chye Siew, went to a cyber cafe in Hatyai, Thailand, and sent an e-mail to the SingGov Feedback account.
The message was read by Ms Sarina Isnin, who was then working as an assistant manager at the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts.
He wrote in the e-mail: "There's going to be three suicide bombings during your country's 40th National Day Parade. I know who and where these crooks are. You guys still have plenty of time to crack down (on) these people."
Ms Sarina immediately forwarded the e-mail to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Defence after receiving it, the court heard.
Khor, 42, who is now a British national, was jailed for four months on Friday (Oct 19) after pleading guilty to giving false information to a public servant.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran said that Khor was sent back to Malaysia in 2005 after serving his six-month jail sentence and receiving three strokes of the cane.
He went to Hatyai soon after, and sent the e-mail.
The Singapore authorities managed to trace the cyber cafe and Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers flew to Thailand five days later.
DPP Thiagesh said: "When the accused was interviewed by the CID team, he continued to claim his information that there would be suicide bombings was correct."
Khor claimed that he had been housed with two Pakistani inmates, Billal and Qadeer, while serving his jail sentence in Portsdown Prison and that the pair had spoken about the July 7, 2005, London bombings, when terrorist attacks killed more than 50 people.
He also claimed he had drawn the conclusion that the Pakistanis would be targeting the NDP when they began talking about the event.
To make his version of events more believable, Khor also provided the officers with two inmate numbers.
The CID team investigated Khor's claims and found that the numbers belonged to two Singaporeans who had never met him.
The CID team determined that the bomb threat was a hoax some time in May 2006 after it managed to track down the two inmates, said the DPP.
Khor was then placed on an Interpol watch list and was finally arrested on May 26 this year when he arrived in Singapore from London.
Court documents did not state why he returned to Singapore.
DPP Thiagesh urged District Judge John Ng to sentence Khor to a jail term of between five and six months, stressing that "the falsehood perpetuated by the accused led to a large wastage of investigative resources".
Khor, who was unrepresented, pleaded for leniency and told the court that he regretted his actions.
