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FUGITIVE terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari continues to be the focus when Parliament resumes on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong expected to address the issue of government responsibility on the issue.
On Monday, Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng gave a full account to the House on the details of events on Feb 27 leading to the escape of the Jemaah Islamiah leader from the Whitley Road Detention Centre.
Mr Wong also released the executive summary of the Committee of Inquiry's findings on the escape, which appeared to have been hatched ahead of time and seized on by Mas Selamat when a confluence of human and physical security lapses which gave him the opportunity to break out from the detention centre.
Calling the escape of Mas Selamat a 'costly and painful wake-up call', he said the physical and human lapses show that complacency has crept into the operating culture at the Whitley Road Detention Centre (WRDC).
While the probes by the Committee of Inquiry and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) found no malice or criminal liability on the part of any officer implicated in the escape more than seven weeks ago, Mr Wong said it would not have happened but for the security and operational lapses.
'Mas Selamat was able to exploit these weaknesses when the opportunity arose,' he told Parliament.
'A window that should have grills but did not; guards who should have maintained line of sight of the detainee under their escort, and who should have immediately checked why the detainee took so long in the urinal cubicle, but did not; physical security weaknesses that were not plugged - these all point to a slackening in internal vigilance and supervision.'
He added: 'Complacency for whatever reason, be it fatigue given the protracted security operations by ISD since 2001 or routinisation over time, had crept into the operating culture at WRDC.'
The minister's comments, together with the COI's executive summary, gave the public, for the first time, a detailed picture of what was likely to have happened on the day Mas Selamat bolted.
The officers responsible for the escape will be disciplined and penalised, said Mr Wong. This will include those at the junior officer level, all the way up the chain of command to the supervisory and management levels of the detention centre.
» Read his full statement here
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