WE REFER to the letters in your forum page on the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari.

Your readers have asked how the escape happened. We too want to get to the bottom of what happened. This is why we have launched a criminal investigation by the CID to uncover whether there has been any criminal wrong-doing.

The Minister for Home Affairs has also established a Committee of Inquiry under the Prisons Act, to discover how the escape occurred and to recommend appropriate actions to prevent such an incident from occurring again. The Committee of Inquiry is headed by Mr Goh Joon Seng, a retired High Court Judge and a member of the Council of Presidential Advisers.

We should await the outcome of the criminal investigation and Committee of Inquiry for the full facts and circumstances of how Mas Selamat escaped.

Your readers also wondered whether some of the information to the public could have been released earlier.

We understand the public's desire for more information. When the incident was discovered, the top priority was to
lock-down the Whitley Road Centre, account for all the detainees and launch an immediate and thorough search of the entire site and its vicinity.

Security at all our checkpoints and border was alerted and stepped up. The security assessment was that Mas Selamat was on the run, he would seek to hide and try to leave the country, and he had no access to resources
or plan of action which would pose an imminent threat to the safety of any target within Singapore or to the public.

Accordingly, the first public statement with information that we could verify to be accurate at that point in time was released.

As the situation progressed, we were able to establish more facts with certainty and they too were progressively released, as long as the disclosure did not compromise any action being undertaken.

We thank readers who have made suggestions or offered help in various ways.

The spontaneous and strong community support demonstrates that the public understands that the first priority now
must be to find and apprehend Mas Selamat.

Mr Toh Yong Chuan
Director, Corporate Relations
Ministry of Home Affairs