Singapore’s ‘Osama’ May Have Targeted U.S. Interests

With his long, untrimmed beard and Arab-style clothes, the condo maintenance manager was hard to miss.

Twice each afternoon, he would hop on his motorbike and ride to the nearby Al Huda mosque. There, he would take a white turban from his bike’s storage box, put it on and go inside to pray.

“Here comes Osama,” some of his fellow Muslims would joke.

Little did they know.

Authorities say tall, 51-year-old Ibrahim bin Maidin was the leader and main recruiter in Singapore for Jemaah Islamiah, a long-hidden terrorist group affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.

Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry says Bin Maidin had been working quietly since at least 1990 to build a network capable of carrying out a devastating attack against the United States.

He reported to leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia, authorities say, evading Singapore’s tight security and recruiting operatives for three terror cells named after Islamic prophets. In 1993, he is said to have received military training in Afghanistan. Casting himself as a religious teacher, he looked for recruits willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for Islam.

Bin Maidin’s activities came to an end in December, when he was arrested along with a dozen other suspected Jemaah Islamiah members for plotting to blow up the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets in this wealthy island nation.

All 13 have been ordered held under Singapore’s Internal Security Act for two-year terms, which the government can renew indefinitely. Rather than requiring a trial, Singaporean law allows the government to imprison anyone who is found to be a security threat.

Authorities say 60 to 80 people, some of them women, belonged to the Singapore organization, although not all were involved in illegal activities. The investigation is continuing, and Singapore is seeking the arrest of several people who have fled or gone into hiding.

Jemaah Islamiah’s ability to organize in Singapore, where the United States has a large military presence, stunned American officials and Singaporeans alike. Officials say one key element was Bin Maidin, who managed to avoid suspicion despite his strong anti-Western views.

The network was uncovered in October when one member, Mohammed Aslam bin Yar Ali Khan, let it slip that he was going to Afghanistan, and an informant tipped off the police. Authorities say they began monitoring his acquaintances and discovered that the group was on the verge of making truck bombs to launch multiple attacks in the city.

Officials say that the organization’s ideology was imported from neighboring countries but that the terror cells themselves were purely home-grown.

In Singapore, a former British colony dominated by ethnic Chinese, Muslims make up 15% of the population. Most are of Malay or Indian descent and historically have occupied the lower strata of society.

Bin Maidin is said to have found his believers among the Muslim middle class, including mid-level managers, small-business men, drivers and technicians alienated by Singapore’s materialism and America’s powerful economic influence.

Of the 13 arrested in December, all were Singaporeans except one, who had given up his citizenship to become Malaysian. All had attended local schools. Six had served in the country’s armed forces.

Most of the suspected cell members wore Western-style clothes and kept their beards short. They avoided going to mosques, where undercover agents are known to mingle with the faithful.

They gathered at private apartments and were usually careful not to talk to outsiders about their beliefs. At work, they did their jobs well and kept their religious views to themselves.

“The group thrived on secrecy, using code-names and code-words for communication, and appeared to have generally kept away from mainstream organizations and their activities,” said a Home Affairs Ministry spokesman who declined to be identified.

Bin Maidin, however, was different. His habit of wearing an Arab-style robe and a traditional cap stood out in the upscale neighborhood near downtown where he was the maintenance manager of the 12-story Belmont condominiums.

He had worked at the building for 15 years and sometimes seemed to act as if it was his. Residents say he was autocratic, at times even intimidating. He made it clear that he didn’t like children playing ball in the courtyard. Foreigners who met him got the feeling that he didn’t like them either.

When the arrests were announced in January, some people who had encountered Bin Maidin were not entirely surprised.

“It isn’t a huge shock to me,” said one Belmont resident who asked not to be identified. “We used to joke that he was Osama bin Laden’s brother. He looked the part.”

He called himself Haji Ibrahim bin Haji Maidin, a title meaning that both he and his father had made the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. He seemed to use his vacation every year to go on the hajj. In hindsight, some Belmont residents wonder where he really went.

Bin Maidin had no formal religious education, authorities say, but had received training from radical Indonesian clerics who occasionally visited Singapore. The lessons reportedly reinforced his anti-Western ideas.

“Ibrahim was a self-taught religious teacher apart from some lessons from Indonesian religious teachers,” said the ministry spokesman. “We surmise that his knowledge of Islam is quite shallow, and therefore what he could pass on would also be quite shallow. The group was obviously influenced by foreign elements and subscribed to these elements’ extremist ideology and anti-American, anti-West agenda.”

One of the visiting Muslim preachers was Abu Bakar Bashir, who has been identified by Singapore authorities as the overall leader of Jemaah Islamiah, or Islamic Community.

Two other accused leaders of the group also taught in Singapore--Mohammed Iqbal bin Abdul Rahman, who was arrested in Malaysia last June, and Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, who is sought by police in three countries. Authorities say Hambali was in charge of all the terror network’s operations in the region.

Bashir, wanted in Malaysia and under investigation in Indonesia, where he lives on the island of Java, denies that he heads the terrorist group but praises Bin Laden as “a true Muslim fighter.”

Bashir acknowledged in an interview that Bin Maidin was one of his students. During the 1990s, he said, he occasionally traveled to Singapore to teach gatherings of 20 to 30 people in private apartments. His lessons included the principles of jihad, or holy war, and the use of violence to defend Islam.

“The truth is, I am the religious teacher who taught them,” Bashir said. “If I’m not mistaken, Ibrahim is a teacher. That’s what I recall. I don’t know him well.”

Bashir said he did not remember meeting any of the other 12 men arrested in Singapore, although he said it is possible that some attended his lessons.

It is not clear how Bin Maidin may have recruited his students. In Singapore, it is illegal to teach religion without a government license.

Officials say Bin Maidin steered clear of religious organizations and, apart from praying regularly, was not active in any mosque. He also was careful not to call himself a religious teacher in public.

Authorities suspect that some of his initial converts found likely candidates and steered them to Bin Maidin. He would meet with one or two students at a time at the apartments of Jemaah Islamiah members.

People at Mosque Remember Him Well

Bin Maidin always left work to attend both afternoon prayer sessions at the mosque, one co-worker said.

“He never missed,” she said. “He went to the mosque even when it rained.”

At the Al Huda mosque, eight blocks from the Belmont, people remember him well.

Usually, he stayed only long enough to pray. He always smiled but rarely said more than the customary greeting. No one seemed to know his name until his arrest was broadcast on television and splashed on the front page of the newspapers.

“He was a loner,” said Syed Ahmed bin Syed Abdullah Baharun, 55, who says he often saw Bin Maidin at the mosque. “He would just slip in, have a pray and go back to work.”

One mosque-goer who declined to give his name said he occasionally chatted with Bin Maidin over a period of six or seven years. It was clear that Bin Maidin had studied extensively and memorized much of the Koran, this man said.

During one such conversation recently, Bin Maidin called Americans terrorists because the United States was bombing Afghanistan, his fellow mosque-goer said. But mostly, Bin Maidin just listened.

“He’s a good listener, not a good talker,” the man said. “He seemed a harmless man.”

Authorities take a different view. They say that the Singapore branch of Jemaah Islamiah was highly structured and that Bin Maidin oversaw all of its activities.

“He was the leader of the local grouping of the Jemaah Islamiah, so he would have knowledge of what individual cells, including the operations cells, were doing,” the Home Affairs Ministry spokesman said.

Since the closure of U.S. bases in the Philippines a decade ago, Singapore has become the U.S. military’s most important resupply point in Southeast Asia. U.S. military airplanes frequently use Paya Lebar air base. An average of 100 Navy vessels a year stop here, and thousands of sailors take shore leave.

Bin Maidin’s group plotted to attack U.S. ships at sea, planes at the air base and sailors on city streets, authorities say.

Jemaah Islamiah was divided into sections that handled fund-raising, security, communications, religious activities and terror operations, authorities say. Police identified three operations cells, or fiahs, that had four to five members each.

One cell, Fiah Ismail, was formed after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. but quickly shut down when police began making arrests in December, the government says.

Including Bin Maidin, the organization is said to have sent at least eight members to train at camps in Afghanistan for periods of three to six months.

Authorities say the arrangements were made by Hambali, the Indonesian cleric, who supplied false papers saying that the members would attend a religious school in Pakistan. Once there, they slipped across the border into Afghanistan.

Their training at Al Qaeda camps included military tactics and the use of AK-47s and mortars, officials say. One Singaporean, they say, went to Afghanistan for training three times between 1991 and 2000.

Khalim bin Jaffar, a 39-year-old printer, was one of the cell members chosen to train at an Al Qaeda camp, the government says. The leader of Jemaah Islamiah’s first terrorist cell, which was named Fiah Ayub, he went to Afghanistan from September 1999 to April 2000, officials say.

Before his arrest, Bin Jaffar worked at the Hoe Hup printers, where fellow employees had no idea of his views. As far as they knew, he did not pray during the day.

“He was a very good worker,” said one colleague. “He kept to himself. When he applied for the job, we didn’t ask if he worked for Osama.”

Bin Jaffar began taking religious lessons from Bin Maidin in 1989 or 1990, investigators say. Before long, they say, he was teamed up with fellow cell member Hashim bin Abas.

An engineer, Bin Abas met Bin Maidin in 1991 through his brother-in-law, a cleric in Malaysia who became the leader of a parallel network there, authorities say.

Both Bin Jaffar and Bin Abas took classes from the Indonesian teachers Iqbal and Hambali. In 1994 or 1995, they went to Malaysia together to a jungle survival camp, the government says.

Bin Jaffar was the physical trainer for the Singapore network, authorities say. Bin Abas served as treasurer and secretary, they say, and procured items such as night-vision binoculars that police later seized at Bin Jaffar’s apartment.

Bin Abas’ last job was as a traveling service representative for the Singapore office of Bystronic, a Swiss-owned machine-tool company. He traveled the Asia-Pacific region, going as far as Australia and China. There is no indication of whether he made contact with terrorist networks during his travels.

A Bystronic official said Bin Abas’ co-workers knew nothing about his religious views or personal life.

“He was hardly in the office,” she said. “He was quiet, a good worker.

Bin Abas lived in an apartment on the eighth floor of a government high-rise. Neighbors say he has five children and that his wife wore a black gown with a veil and head scarf when she went out.

One neighbor said that Bin Maidin and Bin Jaffar, whom she recognized from newspaper photos, were among a variety of men who visited the apartment at all hours.

Around 1997, authorities say, Bin Jaffar came up with the idea of killing U.S. sailors on leave in Singapore as they traveled from the Sembawang Wharves to the Yishun transit station in northern Singapore.

Bin Jaffar and Bin Abas plotted to put a bomb in a parked motorcycle and set it off as sailors got off a shuttle bus and walked to the metro station, the authorities say.

Bin Jaffar videotaped the busy intersection, shooting footage near a police post as well as such American symbols as a McDonald’s and a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Bin Abas narrated the tape.

A copy of the video was subsequently delivered to top Al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan by Faiz bin Abu Bakar Bafana, a suspected regional leader of Jemaah Islamiah. Bafana, who authorities say ranked above Bin Maidin, was one of the 13 arrested in Singapore.

Al Qaeda leaders are said to have been impressed by the Singapore group’s ability to organize such an attack but to have decided not to pursue the plan. The videotape was found in the rubble of Atef’s house in December after he was killed by a U.S. airstrike.

Police recently discovered a second copy of the video in a secret compartment in Bin Jaffar’s apartment. Authorities believe it is the original tape because it does not have Bin Abas’ narration.

“The new finding shows a very direct link between the Jemaah Islamiah group detained here and Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan,” said Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng.

‘Kill Zone’ Information Found on Seized Map

From a computer hard disk found with the videotape, authorities say they recovered a file titled “Security of an Organization” that instructed cell members how to maintain secrecy and avoid detection.

Authorities say they earlier found at the same apartment a Defense Ministry map showing an offshore “kill zone,” where U.S. naval vessels could be attacked, and a list of 200 U.S. companies operating in Singapore, with three highlighted as potential targets.

Bin Jaffar also was in possession of covert photos of U.S. military aircraft taken at the Paya Lebar air base, authorities say. They say the pictures were taken by Ali Ridhaa bin Abdullah, a senior aircraft repair technician at Singapore Technologies Aerospace, a government-controlled aerospace company. Born Andrew Gerard, he converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam in 1988, the same year he began working for the company.

“He is known to be a conscientious worker, and we have never had any problems with his quality of work,” said company spokeswoman Celina Low. “He is known to his colleagues as a friendly person.”

The company is located next to the air base, and Bin Abdullah, a suspected Jemaah Islamiah member, was asked by the second cell, the Fiah Musa, to collect information about U.S. planes, officials say.

The air base is protected by razor wire, high fences topped with barbed wire, dogs and armed guards in camouflage. Warning signs are posted all around it. “NO PHOTO TAKING,” says one. “PROTECTED AREA,” says another, which is illustrated with a picture of a soldier pointing a gun at a trespasser.

Authorities say that Bin Abdullah used his company position to slip onto the base and take more than 50 photos of the planes and their surroundings with a digital camera.

Officials stress that Singapore is safe. After all, they note, authorities broke up the terror cells before the group could launch an attack.

In a speech in late January, however, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong warned that Singapore still faces the risk of attack by escaped cell members or networks based elsewhere.

“We can expect radical and militant terrorists in the region, especially where they have not been put on the run, to try and hit out at American targets in Singapore, or even Singapore targets,” he said.

At the Al Huda mosque, when men hang around after prayers, the conversation often turns to the subject of Bin Maidin. Some say they are glad the authorities were able to break up the cells before innocent people were killed and Singapore’s reputation was tarnished.

“We called him Osama and everybody laughed,” said one. “It happened to be true.”