By Chong Shin Yen

IF YOU don't read newspapers, hadn't seen his wanted posters, and lived in an idyllic kampung cocooned from the world's evil, you may well have taken a liking to 'Bang' Mas Selamat Kastari, the neighbour.

For eight months, he lived in their village, hardly raising an eyebrow as he tended the garden, clearing it of weeds and planting fruit trees, including a meticulously potted durian tree sapling.

It could be his disarming nature - he would always wave in greeting to passing neighbours - or his quiet manner.

Or maybe it was the way he interacted with his 'cousin's' three young children, aged 5 to 12.

He played with them, took them fishing, sometimes picnicking on the banks of a stream about 20m behind the house. He blended into this quiet little kampung of fewer than 100 people.

And neighbours remained blissfully unaware that in their midst was Singapore's most wanted terrorist.

Neighbours we spoke to said he rarely ventured beyond the compound in the day.

When he did leave, it would be under the cloak of darkness, sometimes alone, sometimes with his 'cousin' in the latter's car. Nobody knew where they were headed. Neighbours would be asleep by the time they returned.

During the day, Mas Selamat put his green fingers to work, weeding the garden and planting fruit trees.

He was meticulous, to the extent of using black plastic bags to wrap the ripe jackfruits to prevent insects and birds from getting to them.

Neighbours said that he 'kept to himself and hardly spoke to anyone'.

Didn't neighbours find it strange that he was gardening and babysitting the children instead of working?

One said he was told that Mas Selamat had injured his leg after falling off a ladder. That was enough explanation for the simple kampung folk.

No one even remotely suspected that the man with the limp could be capable of evil.

Yet this was the same JI leader who allegedly wanted to crash a plane into Changi Airport; the same man who is said by Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak to be plotting something against Singapore even as he pottered around the sprawling garden.

That he could blend in and make villagers feel comfortable is testimony to his chameleon-like qualities.

By all accounts, he knew the right words, the right buttons to push to lull others into believing he was harmless.

This should not come as a surprise; this is, after all, the man who fooled trained guards into letting their guard down not once, but twice.

The first was in July 2003 in Bintan, Indonesia, when he asked for some private time to say his prayers. Blink, and he was gone - by leaping out of a window.

The Indonesian police reacted in time and caught him.

The second was in Feburary last year, when he draped his trousers over a sliding door at Whitley Road Detention Centre, turned on the tap in a toilet, and escaped.

The guards that day were bitter - and wiser.

So, too, were the villagers of Kampung Tawakal when they became the focus of the Singapore media, yesterday.

Mas Selamat, they discovered, had once again duped the innocent with his masquerade.

This article was first published in The New Paper.