Singapore detains five Islamic militants -ministry

SINGAPORE, June 8 (Reuters) Singapore has arrested in recent months five Islamic militants, including four members of Jemaah Islamiah (JI), a Southeast Asian militant group linked to al Qaeda, the Home Ministry said today.

The ministry said in a statement that in February the Internal Security Department had arrested and subsequently detained Singaporean national Abdul Basheer, 28, who it said had made specific plans to pursue ''militant jihad'' in Afghanistan.

It described him as ''self-radicalised, independent of direct recruitment by established terrorist groups''.

''His views were shaped by the radical discourse that he avidly looked up on the Internet,'' the ministry said in a statement on its Web site.

The ministry also said that between November 2006 and April 2007, four Singaporean JI members had been detained. It said that one of them -- Ishak Mohamed Noohu -- was a senior member of the Singapore JI network and had been part of a team that had planned to hijack an airplane in order to crash it into Singapore's Changi Airport.

Under Singapore's Internal Security Act, authorities can detain suspects indefinitely without immediate public notice of the arrests.

Reuters SBC DB2032