Singapore detains radicalized teen who 'aspired' to kill Muslims

A teenager who allegedly used a violent online game to train for a mission to kill Muslims, similar to the 2019 massacre in New Zealand, has been detained in Singapore, security authorities said.

Identified as Nick Lee, 18, he allegedly planned an attack mirroring the one carried out by white supremacist Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand six years ago.

Tarrant went on a rampage, killing 51 worshippers at mosques around Christchurch in March 2019 in the country's deadliest modern-day mass shooting.

"Lee aspired to carry out attacks against Muslims in Singapore with like-minded far-right individuals that he conversed with online," Singapore's Internal Security Department (ISD) said.

The department said "his attack aspirations included conducting a Tarrant-style attack on Muslims at a mosque in Singapore, using homemade guns, knives, and Molotov cocktails", and livestreaming the event, similar to the Tarrant attack.

The ISD said it issued a detention order for Lee in December under the Internal Security Act, which allows for a person to be held without trial.

He searched for Tarrant's livestreamed video of the New Zealand attacks and watched it repeatedly, the law agency added.

"He idolised Tarrant, started role-playing as Tarrant in a violent online simulation game," it said.

Lee downloaded "video game modifications so he could pretend to be Tarrant killing Muslims at the Al-Noor Mosque in Christchurch".

Lee's "attack ideations were aspirational and he had no timeline to carry them out", the ISD said, adding that investigations into his online contacts "have not surfaced any imminent threat to Singapore".

A government report on terrorism threats released in July said "youth radicalisation is a particular concern", with 13 of the 52 cases of "self-radicalised" individuals identifie d by the security agency were aged 20 or younger.

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Source: TRT