British national jailed 4 months for sending bomb hoax about 2005 National Day Parade

SINGAPORE — He was angry about being sent to prison in Singapore for an immigration offence. After his release, a British national decided to send an email to the Government claiming that three suicide bombings would take place at the 2005 National Day Parade (NDP).

Khor Chye Siew sent the email from a cyber cafe in Thailand two weeks before the parade to make the authorities “anxious” and “worried”.

He then cooked up an elaborate story when Singapore investigators flew over to interview him, claiming that two Pakistani inmates spoke about the NDP after discussing the 2005 London bombings.

Khor was sentenced to four months’ jail on Friday (Oct 19) after pleading guilty to one charge of giving false information to an assistant manager at the then-Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (Mica). The assistant manager had opened the email Khor sent to the SingGov Feedback account.

The court heard that earlier that year, Khor — then a Malaysia citizen — had served six months in Portsdown Prison and was given three strokes of the cane for an immigration offence. It was not said in court when he became a British national.

After his release, he was repatriated to Malaysia and later made his way to the Thai city of Hatyai.

“Feeling angry and resentful about his time spent in Portsdown Prison, the accused decided to create a fictitious suicide bombing plot in order to make the Singapore Government ‘anxious’ and ‘worried’ as the NDP was around the corner," Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiagesh Sukumaran told the court.

On July 24, 2005, Khor went to a cyber cafe and created a Yahoo email account under the moniker “Malik Mahmud”.

He wanted to hide his identity and thought any bomb threat would be convincing if the email came from an account with Malay or a Muslim-sounding name.

The email read: “To Whom It May Concern, I’m writing this mail just to inform (you of) something (that) your country’s Intelligent Service has failed to do, which is to track down 100 (per cent of) the terrorist activities in your country. Kindly take this information seriously or else don’t blame me if something horror & ugly happens.”

Khor added that the authorities had about two weeks to take action.

The Mica officer who received it forwarded it to the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Defence.

The email was traced to the cyber cafe, and officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) flew to Thailand five days after the email was sent. The officers interviewed Khor after tracking him down in Hatyai.

He continued claiming that the information on the suicide bombings was correct, adding that he had been housed with two Pakistani inmates, “Billal” and “Qadeer”, while at Portsdown Prison.

Khor claimed that the two inmates spoke about the terrorist suicide attacks on London’s public transport system on July 7, 2005, before they began talking about the NDP.

Khor claimed that was how he concluded that the two inmates were planning to attack the NDP. To make things more believable, he provided their inmate numbers and said they had been released sometime in July 2005.

The CID team found that the inmate numbers actually belonged to Singaporeans who had never met Khor. The officers only managed to track them down in May 2006, and determined that Khor’s bomb threat was a hoax.

He was arrested on May 26 this year at Changi Airport after flying in from London.

It is unclear how and when he travelled to London, and why he came to Singapore.

For giving information that he knew to be false to a public servant, he could have been jailed up to one year and/or fined up to S$5,000.