Singapore Embassies Attack Plot - Surveillance Activities

Surveillance Activities

According to investigation, the cell had conducted survey for other targets as early as 1997, when the cell was planning to target the Yishun MRT Station, where American troops and their families used to take shuttle rides to a U.S. Navy site at Sembawang for recreation activities at a sports complex coincidentally known as "Terror Club", named after the last Royal Navy's shore accommodation establishment around the same area, HMS Terror. In 1999, a member of the Singapore cell, Khalim Jaffar travelled to Afghanistan and presented the plan to Al Qaeda's leaders. Mohammed Atef, a close aide of Osama bin Laden, gave JI the go-ahead for the attack, but the plan was not pursued for unknown reasons.

In April 2001, a member of the cell, who was working at the Singapore Technologies Aerospace, took digital photographs of American military aircraft and personnel at Paya Lebar Airbase, and distributed them to other cell members.

The cell had also surveyed other potential targets including water pipelines at the Johor-Singapore Causeway, Singapore Changi Airport, the radar station at Biggin Hill, and the Ministry of Defence at Bukit Gombak