In a Straits Times report today, Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew shared his views on the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari and complacency in an e-mail interview with paper.

In the article, MM Lee said that the country's security officers knew that fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari was 'an escape artist', who had evaded arrest many times.

Nonetheless, the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist leader was able to lull his minders at the Whitley Road Detention Centre into believing that they had him under control, before he gave them the slip.

MM Lee told the paper that if the guards had respected his skills in dissimulation and viewed him with scepticism, they would have not allowed him to spring surprises on them.

'When you are complacent in handling a wily detainee, then you have been negligent,' he also told The Straits Times

In the same e-mail interview, MM said that Singaporeans who believe nothing can go wrong here are 'living in a make-believe world'.

Last month, he had said that the break-out was a 'very severe lesson in complacency'.

For the full report, read Saturday's edition of The Straits Times