Jail for 2 maids who gave money to support terror groups after being seduced by radicalised boyfriends

SINGAPORE — Two Indonesian maids were jailed for terrorism financing on Wednesday (Feb 12) after a court heard that both women were influenced to commit the offences by their radicalised online boyfriends who promised to marry them.

One maid was jailed for three years and nine months, and the other received 18 months' imprisonment, as District Judge Christopher Tan emphasised the importance of deterring others from committing similar crimes.

The offence of foreigners sending money back to their home countries to finance terrorism was hard to detect, even with technological advances, he said.

“Given these conditions, if you do catch (a perpetrator), a stiff message has to be sent out to show that this is not acceptable.”

He added: “The consideration is that once (cases) take on a translational element, it impinges on the reputation of Singapore (which) cannot be seen as a springboard for assistance to terrorist groups.”

Both women had not met the men they thought they would be marrying, who were both terrorist sympathisers, the court heard. It is not clear from court documents if the two maids knew one another.

THE CASE OF RETNO HERNAYANI

In the case of one of the maids, Retno Hernayani, the 36-year-old divorcee’s fiancé — a sympathiser of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) — established a relationship with her through frequent video calls from April 2018 until she was detained by the Internal Security Department on Aug 20, 2019.

Retno was introduced to the man, Fikri Zulfikar, by another Indonesian woman who also introduced her to online material about Isis, the court heard.

To win her over, Fikri set up a mineral water business with her, and had visited her village at Lampung on Sumatra to gain the confidence of her family. Retno planned to cut short her employment contract to marry Fikri in December 2019.

Retno contributed S$40 of her own money and collected S$100 more in donations from three other maids at Paya Lebar knowing that the money could be used to support Isis-affiliated Indonesian extremist network Jemaah Anshaut Daulah (JAD) and other militant groups. She sent the money to Fikri, who used part of the funds to make a donation to a purported religious charity Aseer Cruee Centre (ACC).

She did so even though there were reasonable grounds for her to believe that the money could be used for militant violence causes, such as buying bullets, rifles, grenades and bombs to fight against “enemies of Islam” and to send fighters into the conflict zones, Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Cheng Yuxi told the court.

Retno expressed a desire to join Fikri if he were to go to Syria for “jihad”, which she understood to refer to a “war against non-Muslims”, Ms Cheng added.

Retno was sentenced to 18 months’ jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to two charges under the Terrorism (Suppression of Financing) Act.

THE CASE OF TURMINI

The other maid, Turmini, 31, fell in love with an Isis supporter named Rozaliany Rozz by speaking to him through chat platform Telegram starting in 2018, and planned to marry him after she finished her employment contract in Singapore in September 2019.

She had met Rozaliany through Facebook, and he got her to download the Telegram application, on which she was exposed to many articles about Isis and JAD.

On Telegram, Turmini used profile pictures such as an image of a woman wearing a niqab (a covering worn by some Muslim women to conceal the face while leaving only the eyes uncovered) and carrying a gun, and a photograph of former Isis leader, the late Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

By the time she was caught on Aug 22 last year, she had already donated more than S$1,200 by making five remittances to an Isis and JAD supporter named Edi Siswanto, who promised to transfer the funds to the purported religious charity ACC.

Turmini was sentenced to three years and nine months in jail on Wednesday after pleading guilty to three terrorism financing charges.

During a plea for mitigation, the lawyer representing both maids, Mr Mohamed Muzammil Mohamed, said that part of the recruitment strategy by Isis and JAD members and their supporters is to “play on the emotions and affections of unsuspecting females” with promises to marry them in order to get their support.

Mr Muzammil told the court that Turmini, for one, had since realised that her fiancé’s plans to marry her were false, recognising that his intention was to “make use of her” to support Isis and JAD movements.

“Due to her shallow knowledge and exposure to the real teachings of the Islamic religion which were deliberately misinterpreted and twisted and spread by Edi and Rozaliany, (Turmini) was easily influenced to support the two terrorist organisations,” he added.

In seeking a jail term of just one year for both maids, he urged the court to see that the maids had thought that part of their remittances were to be used “for humanitarian purposes” to support needy family members of Isis and JAD members who were either detained or killed.

In sentencing Retno, District Judge Tan said that he was “hard put” to accept that there is a humanitarian element to the donations as Retno knew that the money could be used for weapons and to send fighters into conflict zones.

He repeated that the humanitarian argument “carries little traction” when passing Turmini’s sentence.

The judge noted that Turmini admitted that she had reasonable grounds to believe that some of the money remitted would be used to support Isis and JAD militant causes, such as the killing and bombing of other Muslims who did not have the same beliefs, as well as those of other religions.

Turmini’s case is more aggravating also because she had coopted her employer into becoming an “unwitting accessory” to her crime, District Judge Tan said.

On the three occasions she asked her employer to help remit money back on Sept 19, 2018, Oct 3, 2018 and Jan 30, 2019, Turmini had lied to her employer that the receiving bank account was a joint account between her widowed mother and Edi, whom she said was her brother.

The employer duly made the remittances and this “unfortunately dragged an innocent party into investigations”, said DPP Nicholas Khoo when making submissions that she should be sentenced to four years in jail instead.

The maximum punishment for terrorism financing is 10 years in jail and a S$500,000 fine.