PUBLISHED ONApril 02, 2025 7:10 AMByChing Shi JieA 15-year-old Singaporean girl, who wanted to marry an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighter and fight for the terrorist group, has been issued with a restriction order under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
The student, who was issued with the restriction order in February, is the first female youth to be dealt with under the ISA, the Internal Security Department (ISD) said on Wednesday (April 2).
Separately, a 17-year-old Singaporean teenager was detained in March for plotting mass shooting against Muslims in mosques.
ISD said the boy, who was radicalised by violent far-right extremist and racist ideologies, had been planning the attack since early last year.
It added that at the point of arrest, he admitted that he had yet to carry out the attacks only because he was unable to procure a gun.
Meanwhile, the girl's path to radicalisation began in June 2023 after encountering ISIS propaganda online.
Within weeks, she became convinced that ISIS was a legitimate religious army defending Muslims in Iraq and Syria.
Viewing the group's goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate as noble, ISD said that she supported the terror group's use of violence to "cleanse the world of kuffar (disbelievers) whom she identified as non-Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims".
In July 2023, the girl pledged allegiance to ISIS's former caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, online through an ISIS chatbot.
"She saw herself as ISIS member thereafter," said ISD.
Between September 2023 to last April, the youth searched for flights from Singapore to Syria on three occasions and considered saving money to fund her travel to Syria.
She also intended to seek travel advice from her online network of ISIS supporters, said ISD.
Aspiring to support the ISIS cause by marrying a fighter from the group in Syria, she hoped to raise sons who would become mujahideen, or fighters.
She sought romantic online relationships with overseas-based ISIS supporters by frequently reposting propaganda on her social media accounts.
ISD said that the girl was in at least eight short-term romantic online relationships with overseas ISIS supporters, including an alleged ISIS fighter based in Syria.
"While the youth's priority was to marry an ISIS fighter and raise a pro-ISIS family, she was also willing to become a female mujahideen to fight for ISIS in Syria," ISD said. "Influenced by footage of female ISIS fighters online, she hoped to die a martyr.
"She thought that she could travel to Syria and receive weapons training from ISIS once she was there."
The girl admitted to sharing ISIS-related content with some of her schoolmates, but none of them took the materials seriously and did not report to their teachers.
ISD said that its investigation to date indicates that the youth had acted alone and was unsuccessful in radicalising her schoolmates.
"The youth's mother was aware that her daughter was consuming pro-ISIS materials and had advised her against doing so," the department added.
"However, she did not think the youth's behaviour warranted further intervention."
On the 17-year-old boy, ISD said that his radicalisation began in 2022 after encountering Islamophobic and far-right extremist materials online.
"His exposure to the materials, coupled with his pre-existing racist views against Malays, led him to develop an aversion towards Islam and Malays/Muslims," ISD said.
ISD said that the boy was an online contact of Nick Lee Xing Qiu, the 18-year-old student who was given an ISA detention order last December.
"Similar to Lee, he identified himself as an 'East Asian Supremacist', believing that Han Chinese, Korean and Japanese ethnicities were superior to Malays and Indians," the department said, adding that the youth regularly reposted Islamophobic and far-right extremist materials on social media to incite hatred against Muslims.
In November 2023, he came across an edited video of far-right terrorist Brenton Tarrant's March 2019 mass shootings of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, on social media.
He then searched online for the full livestreamed video, as well as information on the shooter.
"He felt a sense of satisfaction from watching Muslims being shot on Tarrant's video, and saw Tarrant as a hero for killing Muslims," said ISD.
The youth later learnt about the Great Replacement Theory, which propagated the idea that the indigenous white population in Western countries were in danger of being replaced by non-white immigrants.
He then became convinced that such an event was happening in Singapore, and posted online that there should be individuals like Tarrant here to shoot Malays and Muslims to prevent them from replacing Chinese as the dominant race.
By early 2024, ISD said that the boy thought of emulating Tarrant and shoot Muslims at mosques.
"The youth also fantasised about killing Jews but did not have any concrete attack plans to this end."
Between February and April last year, the boy reached out to an online contact based in the US who claimed to be a gun maker and suggested 3D printing the gun parts and ammunition.
But he did not follow through with the idea due to the "cost and technical feasibility", said ISD.
The boy also reached out to a foreign contact to buy a Glock 19 pistol into Singapore, but it did not materialise either.
He later considered buying guns and ammunition in Malaysia or Thailand, and smuggle them into Singapore.
"To ensure that he would be able to handle a gun, he watched online videos on handling firearms and planned to visit a shooting range in the US," said ISD.
In June 2024, the boy shortlisted five mosques as potential targets for his attack.
They are Masjid Maarof, Masjid Jamek Queenstown, Masjid Darussalam, Masjid An-Nur, and Masjid Hajjah Fatimah.
"While he wanted to conduct attacks against all five mosques to achieve a high "kill count", he had given greater thought to attacking Masjid Maarof, as he frequented the Jurong West area," said ISD.
His plan was to attack when Muslims were leaving the mosque after Friday prayers.
"He set a target of killing at least 100 Muslims, to outdo Tarrant and other far-right shooters in casualty numbers."
"He wanted his attacks to inspire other like-minded Singaporeans into undertaking violence and planned to livestream his attacks to emulate Tarrant.
"He intended to kill himself after conducting his attacks, before the arrival of the police."
ISD said that his parents were aware of his hatred towards Muslims and the excessive amount of time he was spending online, but did not seek help from the authorities.
Speaking to reporters at Masjid Maarof on Wednesday, Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam said that the trend of Singaporean youth being dealt with under ISA is concerning.
"We all need to be thankful that ISD has intervened so far every single time, successfully. But as I keep saying, We have to get it right every time," he said.
"Those who are either on the far right or with tendencies towards extremism on the Islamic side have to only get it right once, and they will kill some people. So we need to be very careful."
Shanmugam was also asked about the difficulties of families intervening after noticing signs of their children's radicalisation.
"It's a question of judgement. Families may not realise that how far advanced is a radicalisation," he said. "They may say, 'oh, this young man is saying these things. We will just talk to him and he will get out of it.'"
Shanmugam said that parents should alert the authorities early if they suspect their children have been radicalised, so that they can "look forward to a life rehabilitated instead of getting killed in some venture".
ISD also urged anyone who knows or suspects that a person has been radicalised to contact its hotline 1800-2626-473.
For more original AsiaOne articles, visit here.
