Muhammad Hanif bin Mas Selamat, the son of an alleged terrorist who escaped a high security prison in Singapore in 2008, was arrested last week at his own wedding reception in Central Java.
His lawyer Achmad Michdan told Jakarta Post that nobody knows where he is being detained and that all they knew was based on the arrest warrant, the preacher better known as Masyhadi, faced immigration charges.
Achmad could not say if Masyhadi had had Singapore citizenship or if his current identity documents were in order.
An investigator from the National Police’s specialist anti-terror unit Densus 88 told Jakarta Post on the condition of anonymity that the arrest was strictly linked to immigration and had no connection to terrorism whatsoever.
“The detective office’s general crime section is the only one dealing with this, and — so far — there is no indication that [Masyhad] is involved in terrorism,” said the officer.
Masyhadi’s father Mas Selamat, triggered Singapore’s biggest and most high profile manhunt in 2008, when he escaped through an open bathroom window at Whitley Road Detention Centre, whilst being detained under the Internal Security Act.
He was suspected to have been the leader of the Singapore cell of Jemaah Islamiah, and was even said to have been planning to crash a plane into Changi Airport, but this was never proven.
Mas Selamat was rediscovered in 2009 in Johor and is predictably, under stricter watch by the Singaporean authorities — Gurkha supervision included.
